Christian Apologist: The Truth About Christianity (And Why Atheism Is Fading)

There are worship groups that worship AI because it's got some of the qualities we normally associate with God and some people welcome this and say this is the way we should go but the danger is we treat these human-eyed robots as if they're conscious beings. This is a seriously important thing and I do feel that the Christian faith is a great deal to say about this and it's fascinating to me that you are very religious you believe in God because typically I think that mathematicians lean more towards atheism. The great pioneers of modern science were all believes in God and I've interrogated myself about it's true for over 70 years. I've made myself totally vulnerable and I found that Christ offers me something nobody else offers me. Peace in my heart, the peace of knowing that I have real forgiveness, things like for example God has met people even in death row and I never forget looking through the door for Russian security death row. I went up to the door and a chap came over and looked at me he killed 12 women and he said I deserve to be here and then his face just worse than to what I can only describe as a ghastly smile and he said I met Jesus here and he forgave me. So on this point of forgiveness with the serial killer be forgiven and allowed into heaven and then how do you know that this thing you've committed yourself to is true? So they have had several experiences enough to tell me look this stuff is real. Okay so guys I've got a favor to ask before this episode begins the algorithm if you follow a show deliver you the best episodes from that show very prominently in your feed so when we have our best episodes on this show the most shared episodes the most rated episodes I would love you to know and the simple way for you to know that is to hit that follow button but also it's the simple easy free thing that you can do to help us make this show better I would be hugely grateful if you could take a minute on the app you're listening to this one right now and hit that follow button thank you so so so much. John Lennox yes you've published over 70 peer-reviewed mathematical papers co-authored to research texts at the Oxford mathematical monograph series and you've really become a pioneer in many domains through your career but for anyone that doesn't know you what is the most important context they need to understand the reference points experience education that you're pulling on that that is going to inform all of the subjects we talk about today. I mean I've written a number of papers I got a certain amount of international recognition I chaired Oxford and all the rest of it but I think the real value of has been the training and logic really saying that mathematics works the fact that it works is for me one of the strongest evidences that this is what I call a word based universe we can use mathematics to describe things about how the universe works thinking God's thoughts after him kept his famous statement but also we've lived to see a biological revolution where we discover a biology's word based as well with the human genome and that to me resonates with the explanation given in both the Old Testament the new language of John's gospel in the beginning was the word I am I don't know a ton about the Bible I do come from a religious family so do you do with them right okay we grew up as Christians I think I lost my face faith at about 18 years old because you know me my my brothers are extremely good at maths they're very rational thinking maybe to a fault I think maybe I am a little bit too I am too you are this too I fall so fascinating because you know typically the scientific community lean more towards atheism and typically I think that mathematicians lean more towards atheism just a sense check if that's true or not well throw the numbers up on the screen so I find that to be a fascinating conversation which I'm looking forward to have with you today um interestingly you wrote this book and the word AI is on it it says God AI and the end of history why are you so concerned dare I say about artificial intelligence as a leading pioneer in Mathemat maths and sort of philosophical well because I met us in the bigger picture anything that raises questions about the nature of human identity and I was first struck by the drive for artificial general intelligence that's really become one of the it looks as if it's the prime motivation of people like Sam Altman and so on it's really hitting the headlines but within that there's the notion of transhumanism what does that mean the idea is that we go beyond the human one of our most famous astronomers royal he put it this way he says in the distant future it won't be organic brains it'll be machine brains and he seriously believes as do a number of scientists are not science fiction authors that there will be some kind of merger between humanity and machines to have a transhuman something that's beyond the human and something that is they hope super intelligent got all the human properties and much more now one of the people who is spreading that kind of transhumanist vision is the Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari and he's written a book called Homo Deus the man God and that really made me prick up my ears because I know enough about this book here the Bible to realize that the drive for humans towards self-deification is yes making themselves gods and you see it all through history the ancient Babylonian emperors where regarded as gods the Roman emperors started calling themselves gods and all the rest of it and what Harari says is the 21st century has two big purposes number one to solve the problem of physical death as a technical problem to solve death yes solve death physical death is an issue technical problem and we'll solve it the second agenda item and he calls them agenda items so the 21st century is to increase human happiness by bioengineering cyborg engineering mechanical implants all this kind of thing and turning humans quote into gods with a small G in other words this is the drive for a super intelligent human we've only got started and his point is and from his atheist perspective one can understand it immediately evolution unguided natural processes have brought us to this point now we're going to take it into our hands and we're going to engineer humanity into the future very rapidly to approach this super human thing now I hear that and I see that but I see that as huge implications for one of the fundamental teachings that's behind I would argue western civilization and that is the notion that humans like us are made in the image of God as rational moral beings now I got into this because some Christian leaders wanted to have a conference on AI and they wanted it introduced from someone who knew something about the teaching of the image of God in Genesis and who had a scientific background and who perhaps began to lead them in to what was going on in the AI field around and once I got into it I realized this is a seriously important thing because we haven't got to artificial general intelligence yet that's still a pipe frame but it's improving all the time but we've got far enough that is to what's called narrow AGI which most of the stuff that works is and that is posing a threat to human beings at all kinds of levels and I began to say that that was seriously important for everybody to take it forward so I wrote two books one 2020 called 2084 as the title of my book artificial intelligence in the future of humanity and then the publishers asked me to update it in 2024 so there's a second edition twice as big and it is my main work in AI that is not that is work on the book of Revelation with reference to AI the other is directly going into AI pointing out its values which I think are immense particularly immense but pointing out its dangers which I think are immense for bringing about a state in the world that none of us I think want so let me just give some definitions that yes sure use the term narrow AI yes and my definition of that is and I'll put something on the screen for those of you watching is AI that's focused on solving a very particular problem so AI is that might build a diagnose lung cancer or that do some sort of biometric data on your Apple watch very focused on solving a particular problem AGI is artificial general intelligence which is what's being built at the moment and all the big AI companies are in a race to accomplish which is a machine that could do any intellectual task a human can faster than any human and would be super intelligent so you know maybe one way to think about it it would have a PhD in everything that's a very fair summary narrow AI system does one and only one thing that normally requires human intelligence AGI does a lot and more you wrote this book 2084 you highlighted in there some of the concerns that you think are being overlooked in this race for AGI at the moment well they're not overlooked by everybody there is huge concern there's been a very interesting book published not long ago by Karen how she was here well there you are and she has got some very interesting metaphors the pursuit of the machine god which I think is a brilliant summary what's going on and I found it very illuminating because she's obviously got very close to the major operators but if I step back from it I look at AI like a knife a good knife you can use it for surgery or you can use it for murder and that leads us into it immediately AI narrow brilliant for picking out the terrorists in a football crowd also brilliant for suppressing a minority in China and bringing in a totalitarian state through social credit systems and all the rest of it and in a way we're sleep walking into a future where we are gradually sitting control and information and data all the time which could be used by bad actors against us and this is the problem I really this question of what it means to be human in a world I think it's been really fun to mind for a lot of people and like where do we live or exist or find our purpose in a world where theoretically these super intelligent systems will reach AGI which means they're more intelligent theoretically than any human on earth but at the same time you've got these other advancements and technology like humanoid robots where these humanoid robots there was a livestream I've talked about a few times I'll just throw it up on the screen really quickly that shows last week a humanoid robot working on a production line for eight days straight and they show up against a human being and it beats the human being on the production line because it doesn't need to sleep it just needs to be charged for a couple of hours to full power and so you combine these two forces super intelligence and the disruption you know you can think of it like one is disrupting this thing here the brain and the intelligence within the brain and then the other technology that's emerged at the same time is disrupting my muscles and my mechanics and the two come together to make voila absolutely so you face joblessness at all kinds of levels and people are only going beginning to realize the implications of that and not just low level repetitive jobs it's high level jobs like lawyers and there's a deep satan ethical problem running through all of this and it's a very simple one it's that technology advances much faster than the ethics is needed to underpin it and the difficulty is the people that have all the power will say well we need some ethical control of all of this but we need to get on with the research to make it safe for you so let us get on with it and you can be a bit skeptical about the motivation there it's a colossal power grab and I do feel that the Christian faith has a great title to say to this arms race if you like the power that is being forced in to having a technology that becomes the ultimate source of truth and those two concepts power and truth clashed centuries ago in a very famous trial and it's the trial of Jesus and I used to wonder a lot you know why is there such detail about the trial of Jesus until I realized what it was about Jesus was put on trial for political terrorism to put it in modern terminology he was a threat to the Roman power base and pilot the governor at the time put him on trial and conducted the trial himself which was most unusual and said are you a king and Jesus looked at him and said well not in this sense you mean to this end I was born and to this end I came into the world that I would bear witness to the truth and pilot famously responded what is truth and went out and declared Jesus innocent of the charge and then he said to him just a bit later don't you know I have power to crucify you and Jesus quietly said you would have no power against me unless it been given to you from above so there is one of the most famous confrontations between power and truth and that statement that Jesus made I have come to bear witness the truth I regard that as the main motivation for my life I'm trying to bear witness to truth as I see it at all kinds of levels in my own limited way and that's what bothers me about AI it's a reductionist we're reducing people to machines and you said to me a few moments ago that flagged up a thing in my mind that's very important we need to be very clear what AI is and what it isn't this is a machine machines do not think machines do not have qualia they do not understand the redness of red they do not experience emotion they have no consciousness and you see I believe that the genius of God is that he's made you and me and he's connected in us consciousness and intelligence the machines are not conscious but they simulate intelligence and the experts are very clear that they're not trying to construct intelligence for a very simple reason they have no idea what consciousness is from scientific point of view but they're trying to simulate intelligence and go as far as they can and therefore the danger is we anthropomorphize everything we treat them as if they're conscious beings and we need to step back and realize that we are conscious beings and that gives us a supreme dignity and value to reduce ourselves to merely machines or on the other hand merely animals is to demean our value and then where are you going to get value from I've got a quote here that's linked to what you just said it's from your vel Noah horari he mentioned he says humans are now hackable animals yes the whole idea that humans have this soul or spirit and they have free will and nobody knows what's happening inside them that is over and Sal Moltman said the most successful founders do not set out to create companies they're on a mission to create something closer to a religion and at some point it turns out that forming a company is the easiest way to do so and lastly a former Google engineer said what is going to be created will effectively be a God it's not a God in the sense that it will make lightning or cause hurricanes but if there is something a billion times smarter than the smartest human what else can you call it it's odd thank you for quoting that because I was going to quote it to you the Sal Moltman's point about about making a religion and that is what is happening and people have pointed out the obvious here you have a system even now that has got some of the qualities we normally associate with God it appears to be omniscient you can ask it any question it is only present through the internet etc etc and therefore already there are worship groups to worship AI and some people welcome this and say well this is the way we should go another people say just wait a moment there's something very strange going on here and in the end you are bowing down to something that in the end is a adulteress because it is less than God but it's very tempting to do that I mean people are basically praying to it now they're confiding in it in a way that they've lived absolutely doing it then you know I'm fascinated by this I've never seen one of these before but I like it in a 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 two halves and one of the people who've influenced my thinking about AI a lot is Dr Ian McGilchrist the author of this fascinating book called The Matter with Things and he has studied the fact that this brain has two hemispheres two halves both halves are involved in almost every cognitive event but the two different halves have different waves of paying attention to the world one is narrow focus the left side of the brain and the other is the big picture and he says what has happened historically in the West is for the last five or so hundred years we have concentrated on the narrow rationalist reductionist left side of the brain and we've forgotten the right side that contextualises everything so that quote we now find ourselves in a world where we understand how almost everything works but we know the meaning of nothing and what he calls for is to open this sphere up and of course that includes to beauty culture art music and religion step by step he appears to be creating more room for God because God makes sense of the space he feels is very necessary to fill and I find that absolutely fascinating and you probably noticed a two the number of intellectuals step by step taking the Christian faith more seriously as giving a rational account of what's going on that makes very big sense of the big picture what is going on in society because it does feel like more and more people have these sort of existential questions about meaning and they might be turning to Christianity or Islam or other but what is from a 30,000 foot perspective happening to us which is making us ask some of these questions and feel a younger generations it might be spirituality however they define that but there's certainly a macro picture here of something happening oh there is I agree with you entirely and I think it's because we've had pushed at us for too long a very reductionist view of the world it's nothing but physics and chemistry it's nothing but this is that and people rightly feel it's too small a world to live in they're looking to break out of this isn't there a bigger picture that can make sense of my world and make sense of my life and giving some meaning because if you reduce everything it ends up like coal of meaninglessness and that's one of my top reasons for not being an atheist because it destroys rationality by almost by definition because it tells me that my brain which does all the thinking it's not my mind it's connected and those are two different things and that's another big story but this is the end product of a mindless unguided process and I have fun with scientists you know sometimes I ask them about the brain and how it arose and they tell me something like that and I said and you trust it tell me if the computer that you use every day if you knew it was the end product of a random process would you trust it every single scientist and some of them are very high powered that I've asked that question to have said no I would not so I say you've got a problem haven't you your atheism goes too far it undermines the very rationality we need to do science let alone to believe in atheism and that's my main beef with people like Richard Dawkins and the new atheist but I see they're fading they're fading so here's the irony atheism claiming rationality destroys it whereas I believe the Christian faith also claims rationality in the sense that evidence based we shout out about that a lot in science and medicine and rightly so what we trust in ought to be evidence based I claim exactly the same thing for Christianity and that's why I'm a Christian because I believe the evidence supports it otherwise I wouldn't so I guess how do I identify maybe as someone that's agnostic like I'm I don't really know well that's okay but does that mean you're open to know you'd like to know yes well that's I'm always open that's that's wonderful to see that's that seems to me to be exactly the right attitude Jesus actually challenged someone in his day and says if anyone wants to do the will of God he shall know after teaching whether I'm speaking from myself or whether it's from God I noticed what he doesn't say he doesn't say if anyone wants to know he will know if anyone wants to do he will know and the difference between the two and I'd be interested in your response to it is that being prepared to do something when you know it is more than just knowing it and possibly just leaving it on the table in all the words Jesus is interested in people who are going to take the step of trust and following him and that's the big deal you know what it is I find all I find all explanations as to like the bigger picture yes to be like fundamentally incomplete yes because there's many things you said about the nature of Christianity and religion that I go amazing yes yes yes and then there's a couple of things I go oh well and the same one I sit here with a physicist that's telling me about the big bang yes I have the same thing where I'm going yes yes of course yes oh we've got evidence that the universe is expanding okay and then they'll say other things and I go well that's not complete and so I find myself sat on the fence I would love you to convince me I mean it's not your responsibility to do so but where does that journey of of believing begin for someone like me because you know people say the Bible and I go well it's kind of like what you said about the computers it's like if you're using something to justify the same thing is true yes then that circular reasoning I find to be incomplete because I could write on this piece of paper Stephen Bartlett is a lizard yes and this piece of paper is true and then you then use that same piece of paper to justify the validity of that same piece of paper and I got that that's not solid reasoning no but you see I could say Stephen Bartlett there's a red Ferrari part that's straight outside yeah and it's yours if you want to take it we could sit and discuss it for a thousand years you would never know whether I was true or not unless you wouldn't look and it seems to me the word skeptic is a very interesting one I regard myself as a skeptic but in Greek skeptine means to look at something from a distance now if you are ever going to get to know a person you've got to begin to give up your distance you will know that from everyday life and it seems to me one of the things to try to begin to grasp is God is not a proposition or a philosophy or even a religion God is a person and as a person he has entered our world however incredible up may say although this is the irony of the Ferrari position if I just said on the side people come to me as they've done with their transhumanist agenda and say you know we're going to solve the problem of death and we're going to increase human happiness and I look at the and I smile I say you're too late and they say what we haven't got there yet I said you're too late for you read we're too late well I said the problem of physical death was solved when God raised Christ from the dead 20 centuries ago and as for human happiness and uploading us into eternity you know I'm waiting for the biggest uploading that's ever going to happen in history when Christ returns and raises me from the dead because that is precisely what he promises and it's most interesting watching people and I say isn't it fascinating that your transhumanism consists in humans reaching out to become little gods whereas Christianity is the exact opposite it talks about a God who became human so that he could give us life and give us a new relationship with him what really completes the circle for me is that my relationship with God is a relationship which is based on the solution to the really hard problem and that is the problem that I by nature have not always done good and by my own standards I have failed now all this talk of transhumanism AI and everything else what is trying to do is to build paradise utopia without facing the problem of the damage that humans have caused to themselves and one another they will not face the sin problem Christianity to me doesn't compete with anything else because Christ offers me something nobody else offers me nobody else offers me peace the peace of knowing that I have real forgiveness the peace of knowing that I have a friend and a companion to him I can talk all the time that's been so meaningful in my life as I spell out in detail my autobiography and the peace of having been given a new life that will not end when I die I'm 82 now I'm probably more than twice as old as you are as I look towards the future I have in my heart a certainty not because I've merited it the exact opposite because I couldn't merit it but because Christ has done something for me through the cross and the resurrection that may sound old mumbo jumbo at the moment but has done something that enables me to have a relationship that is secure that floods over the whole of life and has made my life what it is for the last 70 years more or less I think everybody especially in a world that's getting increasingly lonely and disconnected and isolated for many reasons is looking for that secure relationship they are they're looking for their own you know a home that can't fall down yes yes and a piece that doesn't fade and an inheritance that doesn't exactly you're dead right if I could choose that if I could press a button and have it I would have it but there's this other part of my brain which will naturally interrogate whether it's real or it's true right why am I sitting in front of you talking about this stuff because I've interrogated myself about it and it's truth for over 70 years I've made myself totally vulnerable that's why I got into all the debates with New Atheist and all the rest of it because I want to be sure but it won't come about by pressing a button it will come about if you're open enough to say God I'm open reveal yourself to me and I'm prepared to take the steps that I feel are leading me on to solid ground I do not believe that this is a process of taking a leap into the dark but it's making a commitment on the basis of what you know already and taking a step further forward and the interesting thing about this is the trust that's at the heart of everything I trust my wife I've been married to her for 58 years this year it's evidence based trust I don't trust for no reason and the same is true of my friends as will be the case with you evidence based trust in science and in Christian things I don't regard myself as religious particularly and the reason is this and it's an important reason most religions prescribe a moral way that you try to follow and you've teachers gurus and moms all the rest priests to keep you on the way and then you come to a judgment at the end and I usually draw a scale of justice and if you're good deeds tip over the bad deeds then you get into whatever it is heaven or vana all the rest of that's religion it's not Christianity though many people think it is because if you ask them are you a Christian and say well I do my best and I hope that God will be kind that isn't Christianity it's the exact opposite of Christianity that's a merit based religion and you see the irony of all this it is that we would never at least I don't know some people might but in a human relationship we don't base our affection and relationship with someone on the basis of their merit I have a little analogy I use that sometimes tickles people's minds I say that I met a beautiful girl on my second day at Cambridge I'd been warned she might be there and she was sitting in church and I decided that I'd like to marry her so I bought the most expensive cookery book I could and I came in a hand at her and she said what's that well I said you know we have an interesting tradition in our family you see and if anybody gets married they give the potential bride a cookbook why well look at page 152 here's the the laws for making an apple cake and I like apple cake so law one two two two takes away what's flour sugar sugar now I said it's going to be like this if you keep those rules the next let's be generous 40 years or so I will accept you otherwise you can go back to your mother now when I say that to the audience they rock about well after but it's exactly the way many of them have been taught to think about God keep the rules as best as you can and hope that God is generous when actually I did no such thing I've given my wife several cookbooks but they're not the basis of the relationship and because the relationship is based on acceptance that comes at the start of the common journey it sets her free to live and do other things that she wants to do and I have noticed often the ones people begin to realize that they're beginning to understand a basic concept which is grace that God does everything and if we trust him he it is that gives us a certainty so it's not arrogance to accept it from him it's arrogance 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 accept me and the heart of the Christian message which I believe is there is that the trust is based on what someone else has done what Christ has done not what I have done and that's what's given me the power and as I said earlier completed the circle and enabled me to live that was a really beautiful description and definition of what the Christian faith is about it still leaves me with a question about whether it's true and this is the sort of central question that I need to find my way over yeah I agree with you absolutely and this is I find myself often I've sat with a few like Christian apologists and asked them similar questions about like how do I 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 go outside and see for yourself as anywhere you're going to know but what how do you know that this thing you've committed yourself to and you've believed and you know I've talked about for 70 years of your life is true and could it be the case that it's not true okay let's handle that that's a hugely important question I have two approaches to this which I call roughly speaking objective and subjective and it depends entirely where someone's coming from they may start very far back and say look we read about this chapter Jesus how do we know we have ever existed well then you go to the ancient historians and you find that most of them whether they're atheists or not believe that he existed and so on I accept that he existed yes yeah okay well that's a good start you know some of the disciples when Jesus rose from the dead they just didn't believe the story ridiculous and there's a famous story of Thomas who said to the others he said unless I see the marks in his hands and so on I won't believe and then Jesus stood upon him and he didn't make fun of Thomas's objective he said Thomas coming over look you never know what swimming is until you get into the water isn't that true it is true and all I can say is that step by step keep asking your questions absolutely I don't believe that God will ever ask us to take a step with which we should be uncomfortable I just don't believe that could you be wrong that Christianity so could it be the case that Christianity was was about a real guy called Jesus based on a real guy called Jesus but the story's told you know there was decades passed between the things that happened and not so much as you'd think actually what for four decades with the first when you say to me could you be wrong my academic mind says theoretically yes but practically no could I be wrong it would be like asking me John you know you've been married to Sally for 58 years could you be wrong that she loves you well theoretically yes but actually the evidence all points in the other direction and that's what I would say that I have built up in my life and I'd love you to ask me that question when you've read that autobiography why would you think it would be because I think what I relate there is enough evidence for someone outside who's skeptical to say there may well be something in that but in the end you won't know until you step into the water and then you find the crisis there to catch you and what did you find in the water when you stepped into the water well I was very young you see my parents taught me quite clearly that I wasn't born a Christian you become a Christian by trusting Christ that's to have somebody born or made a Christian by some ceremony is absurd to my mind and so in my simple way I responded as a child I didn't have any great feelings or anything else but what happened to me as I grew up especially as I went to university and Cambridge and I decided look I really believe this stuff is true I'm going to stand for it and it was when I began to stand and share with others that a great deal of the underpinning came in and the certainty came cumulatively not all of the big I've never had these big flashes of anything but I have had several experiences of what I can only put down to direct divine guidance and I record them in the book where I talked to me founders they all carry the same belief but the biggest threat to their small business is having a bad product it's not the biggest threat they face is hiring the wrong person for their small team because bad hires put the handbrake on growth and rapidly infect company culture might get it when you're starting out you need a players to grow your company but you don't have 40 spare hours to spend sifting through interviews so you hire fast to fill the seat but this ends up costing you even more in the long term what any small business actually means is a reliable and efficient way to find the right talent without stalling momentum that's where our long term sponsor LinkedIn and LinkedIn hiring pro can help you it streamlines the entire hiring process from drafting a job description to shortlisting candidates and conducting AI powered interviews for initial screenings nearly 60% of hires who've used this tool have found a candidate to interview within a week higher right the first time around and get started by posting your first job for free at linkton dot com slash do ac that's linkedin dot com slash d o ac in terms and conditions apply if i asked you to picture a Guinness world record holder right now you would not be picturing a phone charger company but our sponsor anchor yes the charger brand and one of our technology partners just set a world record their sound core earbuds hold the Guinness world record for the world's clearest calls did you hear that that is what obsession sounds like most brands think that earbuds are as good as they can be so they compete on the surface they compete on base battery colors but not anchor the liberty five pro and pro max earbuds use 10 sensors and anchors own AI chip to help you keep your voice clear in noisy places which sounds like an unreasonable amount of engineering for a small problem until it's your problem until you're trying to win a pitch from an airport lounge or station platform and all they can hear is wind or traffic anchor obsessed over the tiny invisible maddening difficult environments that we find ourselves in all the time and how those environments stand in the way of the communication that we want to have and when you try anchor for the first time you like me will probably think thank god that somebody cared this much click the link below to try them for yourself now i've got some some of the questions that really stumped me when i was so i was christian up until the age of about 18 and then i went into the whole like new atheist movement with Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris and that little phase of life but one of the stats that used to get me when i went to that new atheist movement was that globally 91% of adults simply adopting keep the religion they were raised in and if a person is born into a hindi or muslim household there is a 99% statistical probability they will remain in that faith only 1% switch out and then the argument i think it came from Dawkins or someone else was that is it fair that there's this birth lottery determining who ends up believing what or theoretically getting into hell or heaven yes because if i was born in i don't know afghanistan the probability says i'd probably be muslim yeah well i take that absolutely so god gave you an advantage in this context because he he allowed you to be born his in his all knowing all all understanding way put you to be born in a place where you would like you to be christian sounds to me as if he gives the same advantage to you so the question is what do we do with that privilege now i know that there are hard problems around the edge here there are really hard problems not only where you're born and what you believe this was the argument that Peter singer advanced to be hit a debate i don't know whether you've heard about it Peter singer you know the Princeton ethicist who really was one of the new atheists but not quite very famous for his views on dealing with the unborn all the rest well we had a debate in Australia and i started as they always do by being upfront about my background and he when he got the chance this thing he said well there goes my best objection to religion people always stay in the religion which they're brought up you see when i next got a chance to speak i said Peter i told the audience about my christian background but you said nothing about yours now tell me where your parents atheists he said they were oh i said that you remained in the faith in which you were brought up nobody said it isn't a faith and i said Peter i was i was convinced that you believed it and i've brought the hostine of course the saver space went mad and the point was made repeatedly all over the internet here's one of the world's top philosophers he doesn't understand that his atheism is a belief system and the irony was the very first person he met after that debate was a fellow hungarian Jew who was a friend of mine and then my friend said and i became a christian so the very first firstly that was someone who had transition from his background that doesn't answer your question it's a question i ask often because God could correct this well this is just the point and we have had these arguments and debates a good god and an old powerful god would could shoot all this kind of stuff and we never get a satisfactory answer to that so i've come up with another problem possibly because of my mathematician and we when we've hammered a twin problem for centuries we usually stop and try it all the way my other problem is just as hard but i think it gets me a bit further and it's this every world you must face a mixed picture i call it beauty and barbed wire or beauty and bombs that that's the world it's mixed and if you don't accept that you're not in touch with reality now here's my question is there anywhere evidence enough to trust God with that situation that's a hard question and by that you mean the situation of this geographical distribution of believers yes we'll never understand it or solve it but do we trust God do we trust God ultimately to be absolutely fair because of God isn't fair in the end he knows what everybody thinks i believe and we'll be surprised maybe at what he does because he can measure how much people know my responsibility is twofold one to respond to the evidence i've had and then Christ tells me to go and share it and that's what i do i've been doing all my life doesn't answer a question but it gives you motivation and the alternative to rule God out has so many negatives to it that i think i think yes so when i think about what i understand of the Bible there's a particular part of the Bible that talks about the only way into heaven is through Jesus and from that i infer that the only way to get into this great place that everybody wants to go to is by believing in Christianity i'm not sure that they do i have met many people who when they hear what Christ offers they reject it but that's another point so if if we talk about this distribution sort of birthright distribution of what you believe and then those that believe this one particular thing are going to get into this heaven it feels unfair or this idea that only those that believe get in is wrong or God is not as nice as we thought and he's playing a bit of a cruel game there's a fair bit going for your logic there i i i think and i think the aspects of this we don't understand because to give a crude example of this i expect to meet Abraham and Moses but they didn't know about Jesus because they were before yes when i approach this you said you're agnostic i like that word people rarely ask me if i'm agnostic but what i'm telling you is i'm agnostic about masses of things it's how i learn agnosco in great just things i don't know yeah and once you take the other step and saying i don't know and you can't know and then becomes illogical because if you don't know how can you know that i can't know and i always remember the words of Richard Feynman who was a brilliant Nobel Prize winning physicist you probably heard of Richard Feynman who said bend over backwards to criticize yourself because you are the easiest person for yourself to deceive amen he was dead bright and that's why i love exploring these things and i feel honored to talk to someone who's still refreshing i think there's great hope for our culture and people like yourself exploring and sharing with the world the conclusions that you come to and the people that you're interacting with yeah like i said i have no i don't have perfect answers either way so that's why the way agnostic seems to be perfectly apt the other real question that i had that really stumped me when i was 18 years old was this point about omniscience yes i mean it's the oldest question in the sort of atheist religious battle which is if god is all knowing he knew exactly which individuals would reject him and suffer and go to hell before he even created them yeah that's determinism so how is creating a soul that you know is doomed an act of love well it doesn't i don't go for that determinism in fact everything the book that think about it i think it was actually really javice tell the story of the the baby being born in let's say it's africa or somewhere else or india or wherever it might be the uk who is born with a parasite eating its eyeball from the inside i know this yeah and i remember hearing that when i was 18 yeah terrible and thinking okay so if god's all knowing he knew that that baby was going to have its eye eaten out by a parasite before the baby was born but allowed the baby to be born anyway and with my moral compass i would have intervened and if he's what omnipotent or powerful he could have into so how do you these quite where is the flaw in that question is there a flaw is there a misunderstanding i i think there can be a misunderstanding but it's a very understandable one because i feel exactly the weight of that as well my question that i set out a few minutes ago is there any evidence anywhere that god you can trust god with it and the major piece of evidence to my mind is the cross of christ and if christ really is god who may claim to be this is god suffering and why is god suffering well it certainly tells me that he hasn't remained distant from human suffering but has himself become part of it now that's not an answer there are no simplistic answers here but you see once you remove god that child there's no hope for it the dead gone out nothing but suppose god can compensate that child because he is the power to raise from the dead as he did with Jesus that changes everything for me the universe without a resurrection i don't know whether you've ever watched my debate the first one were Richard Dawkins i suspect i have very last bit of it we were suddenly told we'd only two minutes to wrap up instead of nine each and i said something about the resurrection and i never forget what Richard said it was something like this we've had a great discussion of my big ideas and so on and now we come down to the resurrection of Jesus hope petty how perocryl how unworthy of the universe i remember thinking if Jesus rose from the dead it's the biggest thing that's ever happened because it may open the way to understanding that there is life after death and you see cs lyrs has helped me a lot i used to listen to him i'm that old he has helped me a lot in in this idea of a sense in which there's more than one world and we're so conditioned to thinking that this world is the only one there is but if there is another world and there is a loving god then i suspect i can't prove this to you but when we one day see and enter that world and see what god has done with the kind of child you mentioned we'll have no more questions so you think he's compensated that child oh yes god is a god of love he'll do much better than look the biggest gift that god has given you and me is our moral sense and the capacity to love now we analyse problems like this with our god-given capacities and we come and i understand that perfectly well because i've come to the same place as you and say well god of i had been you i would have done 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 i've nearly died already i've said goodbye to my wife for the way and they thought they weren't 14 years ago and i said goodbye and it's interesting when things like that hit you forgive the personal reference but it's very real total peace both of us had as i went into the operating theatre and the surgeons saved my life and this would take us down another rabbit hole but i got to New Zealand just a few days after the earthquake and i was on a lecture tour and everything was scrapped i was in television radio but only one topic why earthquakes you see and i met people that had lost loved ones and all this kind of thing and i talked about the god who has suffered and raised Jesus from the dead and the interesting thing was it was that that gave the most hope to the people that were listening to me because they told me and wrote me little letters afterwards and so on so i think there's something big here but that god allows these things to happen is something that in the end we have to take on board even when they happen to us what about all the the humans that lived before Jesus came well god will never judge anybody for not knowing but they didn't know interesting that's an interesting idea so i don't know yeah so am i good am i good again to heaven well no one is good but god but you see is it important for me to you do know a great deal that's obvious to me you do know a great deal you know what this is all about and in a sense you've been very near at the beginning and you're now doing an exploration and i mean your life story is that you must write your autobiography sometimes but wait wait a few years yeah i think i need a few more experiences yes but you will get them i really believe that the openness is the important thing yeah quiz people put your Christian friends on the day yes i know it's lovely to find someone who's prepared to do that quite frankly is it important that i believe in god like if i live a good life i'm kind people and i do my best but you see that's exactly the point i was making that people think that living a good life and being kind to people is what god is interested in when god is prepared for us a relationship with himself through Christ that deals with the forgiveness of sins that we all need forgive me using the acne phrase but 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 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 if we compare ourselves to the sermon on the mount for a week we'll soon realize that we're lacking and i i think one of the big changes comes in people as they realize just the depth of what they might be capable of and possibly the depths of some things are sadly they do and are facing a big need of forgiveness you meet many of them in prisons of course but i have seen such remarkable things happen both directly and indirectly with people who've made such a massive life and god has met them even in death row in russia and places like that where i was able to go because i speak the language to a certain extent again that i find tremendously powerful evidence that god is at work in these people's lives it is statistically the case that the more hopeless your life becomes the higher the probability you have of tining to a religion and also if you're having a crisis of meaning in your life whatever reason i looked at some of the data and it does show that that's absolutely right and that's what you'd expect of the efforts true at least for certain extent it gives that people something outside themselves that's the simple psychology i would have thought simple psychology it doesn't prove the truth is it doesn't prove the truth because what if i believe in yeah i'm dragging at the bottom of the garden i know of this spaghetti monster teper horns of your Irish and it seems to be the case that really irrespective of which religion that you know fills that you know place in your life you still get the same boost in meaning post starting to believe well i'm not convinced of that you see Because I'm sitting here as a Christian, and I've reasoned for being a Christian, because I don't find this need met in those practitioners of other religions. I don't find that sense of fulfillment and peace that comes through the forgiveness in Christ. Now, when I say that, I need to guard that very carefully, because one of the troubles and I do will probably realize this, and talking about different religions is that once you begin to criticize a religion, people rightly think you're looking down at them. And so I clear the ground completely by saying that a pagan or a person in any religion could put me to shame by their moral behavior. In raising questions about what is taught by a particular religion, I'm not criticizing your moral stance. And CS Lewis helped me greatly there. He wrote a book in the 1940s where he tackled, I think, 40 different religions and philosophies. And in every one of them, he found the golden rule. Do you want others what you would? And he points out that this is morally hardwired into your system. So that when I'm talking to people of other faiths and ask these questions, I'm very careful to say that at the beginning. But we've got to face the fact that there are differences. My Jewish friends believe that Jesus died and did not rise. My Muslim friends believed he didn't die. I believe he built died in a rose. Those three things cannot be simultaneously true. But when I look at the stats here, data shows that devout Muslims and a devout Hindu get the exact same psychological meaning boost and sense of peace as a devout Christian. Well, how do you measure that? Well, they ask them, they're your life more meaningful than sometimes I've got one particular friend who's part of his, you know, evidence that what he believes is true is the feeling he got when he started believing it. Yeah, well, the data suggests that if it is true, a possibility of feeling would reinforce that, of course, but it doesn't prove it in the end. But then your criteria for yourself of what you accept will be different from that person. So you have to proceed on the basis like Thomas of old. He wouldn't accept what the other guy said. He said, I need the evidence for myself. And you need the evidence for yourself, evidence of the kind that's going to give you a settled peace and confidence and what you believe. I can understand that perfectly. Then there were also I was thinking then I was thinking that there's fiction movies I've watched that made me feel really good. Yes, you're right. And they made me feel like more motivated and connected to the end of course. See what you do. Uh, just making myself a delicious coffee from the freezer from the freezer. You know, how about come to you? No. Oh my gosh. This is going to change your life. I invested in this company called Commitier last year. And then I wanted the sponsors of this podcast because they've taken a pretty revolutionary approach to making coffee every coffee is precision brewed at 10 times the strength. And then they flash freeze it with liquid nitrogen to lock in the flavor and freshness. And then it's delivered to you on dry ice in these recyclable aluminium capsules still frozen like a lice cube. All you have to do is pop the capsule out, add some hot water. And then you stir it and you are good to go. You can also make delicious ice coffee drinks as well. Just pour it in, stir it up. And for anyone that hasn't tried it, you can get $30 off your first order of Commitier Coffee if you go to Commitier.com slash Stephen. I've done almost 700 interviews with some of the most interesting people in the world. And one of the things you learn, which is unexpected, is that vulnerability is the doorway to connection. And after sitting here for two, three hours with a guest, I feel a deep sense of connection to them. And as they leave, what I get them to do is to write a question in the diary of a CEO. We've taken all of the questions from the diover CEO. We have put the question here on this card with the name of the person that wrote it. So you can sit at home as I do with my fiance and my colleagues at work and other people in my life. Whenever we get a minute, we play the diover CEO conversation cards and it is incredible what happens. These are great if you're in a romantic relationship and you want to connect your partner more. These are also great if you're in a team and you want to bond your team together. And I have to say they're also great for families that want to learn more about each other and that need a good excuse to spend some time in a digital world in the analog environment, connecting human to human. It is remarkable what the right question at the right time can do. Go to the diary.com and you can get these conversation cards right now. So going back to this question I asked about good people, living a good life, it seems to be the case that the Bible suggests that if you don't believe in God, even if you lived a good life, you go to hell and hell is described as not a nice place. So I think about the most kind person I know that's lived her life to be unbelievable passed away, she didn't believe. Does that mean she's in hell? Well, you can't answer that. Let me just say something here that what a scripture reveals is a very interesting thing that the only people to whom Jesus talked about hell were religious beings who were in danger of it. He didn't talk about it to ordinary folks who were struggling with believing and trusting God and all the rest. That's point number one. What is what is what I think what are you implying there? Well, what I've been playing there is that we paint hell as something ogre like God stuffing and demon stuffing bodies into hell when actually I think Lewis got it right here. You know when he talks about this, that hell is absence of God and it's chosen. If a person doesn't want God in their life and I've known people like that and they choose it, God will give them what they choose, otherwise God is going to have to force his way into their lives and they don't want him. And here is the amazing thing to my mind about Jesus and his attitude. He would go places, he would heal people, he would bring peace into their lives and all the rest of it. But when folk saw what he did and said go, leave us alone, he went. He didn't force his way into their lives. And it seems to me that the one example in the New Testament of a person who did not live a good life and neglected the poor around him and ended in that place. There is no evidence that he wanted out of it. What he said was, please send Abraham to my brothers that they don't come to this place. There's no indication that he wanted out of it. And I think this is a grim reality here that when we use these words, we need to be immensely careful. You can choose not to have God and God will honor that choice and that is hell. One of the things that I grew up believing because of the Bible was that if you repented, which is to ask forgiveness, admit your sins, etc., acknowledge God, believe, then your sins would be forgiven. So if someone was a serial killer for their whole life and then repented at the end of their life, would they be forgiven and allowed into heaven? I guess this is kind of links to the question I just asked, which is if someone was a doctor for the whole life, you're curing childhood cancer, but they didn't believe they would theoretically be going to this place described as hell. We can argue about cases like that all the time, neither of us is God. And the way God deals with these people, after all next to Christ and the cross were two thieves, whether we're terrorists, actually, they both murdered apparently. And one of them railed against Jesus and shouted and all this kind of thing. And the other somebody said to him, I deserve to be here. Remember me when you come into your kingdom, and Jesus turned to him on the cross and said, today you will be with me and paradise. So you speak of an murderer? Yes. In that sense, yes. And the apostle Paul was a murderer. Her deep mysteries here is just amazing. I never forget looking through the door of a Russian security death row. I'd never been in a death row before and the stink, it was just like a nightmare. And because I was the only one with the Brits who could speak Russian, I went up to the door and a chap came over and looked at me, gone and all this news, just awaiting execution. And what he said to me was this, he said, I deserve to be here. He killed 12 women or something, I can't remember which. And then his face just burst into what I can only describe as a ghastly smile. And he said, I met Jesus here and he forgave me. And you just, you go away with a very burdened heart, I think. And he said, my colleague lying over there is the same. What do you make of it? I don't think we're going to find out. I don't know, I feel like I'm wired to try and have to solve these back in problems. These big questions, I have to like figure them out or they'll just sit there causing increasingly more confusion, which pops me right on that agnostic fence. Yes, I would encourage you to concentrate on the one that you think is most important, one at a time. And I don't know because I fully met you. I think what you're doing by talking to people from different backgrounds and so on. I'd love to be able to say, here's where you must look, but each one of us is so complex. And what will answer the question for you might not answer it for the person sitting next to you. But don't stop exploring, I would say. But I don't think you will. No, I won't. That's for sure. Because I find the curious pursuit of truth in and of itself a rewarding pursuit, irrespective of whether I have to find the answers. That's the key. A speech that made a deep impression on me was given by Alexander Sojourn at some point he was pushed out of the Soviet Union. Do not compromise the least with lies, live not by lies. I think our generation needs to hear that because one of the great and tragic capacities of AI is the spread of lies, deep fakes, all the rest of it. I've been subject to it myself in the last month. When you think about the impact that AI is going to have on human purpose, we talk a lot about job losses and white color workers, entry-level roles, and then really like everything else. If you have a whole lot of time horizon, it's conceivable that many of the roles we all do today, including maybe even as a pollcaster. I think Spotify announced this month that you're going to be able to generate your own podcasts with AI. What is the high level sort of philosophical point we need to understand about meaning and how to live a good life in a world where some of us might lose our jobs and have to contend with change in a way that we've not experienced before? I think we just have to, I mean, I've children, grandchildren, all the rest of it. And one of my sons has begun to ask questions, Dad, AI looks as if it's going to replace my job. Well, he's tech savvy and he will rise to it, I suspect. But all industrial revolutions did this, but this is going to do it in a scale never before seen. And the tragedy is, I was talking about this in South Africa and they said it's all very well to tell us to reskill people. But if you don't have the educational infrastructure to do that, you'll just force a much bigger divide between the rich and the poor. They're really worried about it. I think the important thing, which is why I wrote my books, is to inform and get people thinking and get them talking. What is the conversation you want them to be talking about? I think it's a very wide-raging conversation. You know, there are existential things for people. They're afraid. Should they be? Well, they should be afraid of some things. I think the creeping advance of totalitarianism is something that couldn't go for all. If we're not very careful, it's creeping, creeping, creeping, and there's being rolled out in parts of the world, particularly China. But not only, I read a very interesting report by a Chinese watcher saying, beware you in the West, because the only difference between us and you is you've got all the technology, but not yet a central government imposing it. Not yet. Beware. And I think we have to beware, because we are sleepwalking into this. I certainly seldom, I don't know whether you come across him. He's an education that's very highly regarded by various governments, has written a book about AI as effect in education. And of course, it's having a devastating effect, as you know, what is an essay? Everybody's using AI, and it's hard to recognize whether it's AI or not now, so that we're into a whole new world or coming rapidly into it. How do we know what is true and what isn't? A few weeks ago, I was contacted, could a publisher produce a transcript of a recent lecture I'd given, because they liked it so much, never heard of it. I looked it up, discovered a website describing itself as Linux logic, and it was a picture of me, but it was deepfect all the way through, and AI generated material that I would never have said, or politicized, and everything else. Is it conceivable that maybe so much of this technology has promised that it would make us more human, and so much of it failed, it made us more isolated and lonely? Oh, yes. Is it conceivable that if a technology comes along like AI, it will render us useful, for the things that humans are uniquely positioned to do, as in being with each other in the real world and relationships, and is it conceivable that maybe we were never meant to see in front of screens tap tapping buttons, and... Oh, I think that's absolutely true, but it's already exercising many people's minds in that direction. And could that be a better life? Well, how would I judge that? I guess one way, yeah, it's a good point, and I was thinking about this, I was thinking, is this like the moment where we kind of regress back to how we used to live? Our true, maybe human nature, is that what happens here where, I don't know, we spend more time with each other in the real world, because that's what, you know, that's very human, and my mazlovia needs of connection and touch, and... Yeah, yeah. Well, you can... You're going to stay there. You can demonstrate that. Look at these groups of parents who have said to their kids, look, we're going away into the country for a week, and we're taking your smartphones away, and they grumble and say, no, no, no, they come back after the week, having rediscovered nature, they don't want to use their smartphones very much, totally transformed by touch and taste and feeling. You see, AI is a machine. It doesn't have any of our five senses, which are all connected with our consciousness. It doesn't see. It doesn't hear. It doesn't taste. When you say it doesn't touch, it doesn't smell. It doesn't see. It can be programmed to recognize patterns, but it is no awareness of what the process of seeing is. Does it need it? Well, that's not the point. What I'm saying is it's distinctively human that we understand what seeing is. We know what seeing red is. Do we? The machine, yes, I think we do. I mean, we can philosophize all around it, but it's a conscious experience, and consciousness from a scientific perspective is called a hard problem. No one knows what it is. We don't understand it. Yes, you can't replicate it. So how do we know AI is conscious? If the output is the same, I can point an AI at this and say, what is it? And the AI will say it's a mug, and I can get a human talking here and say, what is that? And they'll go a mug. Now, the output is the same. Yes, but the understanding is not there. And why does that part, why is that critical? Well, because there's a huge difference in being a machine and responding to a program created by others, and being aware of what you're doing consciously, that's a totally higher level of being. I agree. But why does that matter in this context? Well, one another we've asked in this question is actually visualized by what I have in front of me here, because one of the big debates around AI is, is it creative? Yes, I know. So here we have a picture done by a human, which is a picture of a family and a dog, and then we have another picture here, which is done by AI. Yes. And we have another picture here, which is done by a different AI. Yes. Now, there's a debate that AI can't be creative. Now, can AI be creative? Well, if you call what's in front of you as creative, then it can be. But it now comes down to the very big question of what you actually mean by creative. Yeah. You see, it can create things. It can put things together that haven't been in that form before, but it's not aware of doing it. It doesn't know that those are children, because it doesn't know. But if I ask it, what is that, it would say a child? Yes, but it doesn't know, like we know. And it goes back to the same question, which is, which is like what the process, why does the process matter if the output is identical? Well, let me just say that that view is exactly the view that Alan Turing took at the beginning. And if you look at what's often referred to as the AI Bible, Peter Norvig and his colleagues, he said, look, we are not trying to create a conscious machine. We wouldn't even know what that meant. We are happy with the imitation game, and that's good enough for us. We're not trying to do it. But you see, the conscious side involves all that appreciation of life and nature and beauty and so on, that we can see some meaning in, but also there's another thing. There's a consciousness of other people, and there's God consciousness. I don't think AI anywhere near that machines. There are certain things they cannot do, even potentially, that the human mind can do. So there's no way a machine is ever going to be able to simulate a human mind completely. But that's difficult, that's difficult, mathematics and all the rest of it, and it's highly controversial. Why is an important conversation to have that it is conscious or not conscious when the output is the same? I can see the question, but if you want to live in a reductive universe, which ends up being meaningless, well, let you can go that way, there's nothing to stop you. Because it seems to me there are enough indicators within nature, within science, within our human experience that tell us there's a bigger world, and this is the right and left brain stuff for back to the Giltra skin, his stuff in AI is very strong. He thinks it's really dangerous because it's ruining all this side of the brain and the richness of human experience, and it's in danger of destroying it. He actually invites people to come and fight with him. So in such a world, what is it that makes humans, what is it that makes us special? Is it that those human things we talked about relational? Oh, I think so, yes, absolutely. And the fact that you and I can have a conversation like this. You could have this conversation with AI. I'm the same way. AI is pretty thin still. You can have a conversation of sorts. But remember, who's responsible for its capacity, humans? It's something made in the image of humans, and that's a dangerous thing. I'd prefer to obey it was something made in the image of God. It's interesting because we're getting to a point where there's going to probably be some like ethical questions around robotics. Oh, they're already here. They're already here. But only around robotics. Oh, everywhere. You know, in the same way that many of us feel quite empathetic towards like trees. Yes, yes. I feel empathetic towards animals. Yes. Now trees haven't got a brain, but just cutting down a tree needlessly. Yes. I think we're annoying a lot of people because it's... Everyone annoying me. Yeah, we're annoying me too. And I think there's almost going to get to a point where like, you know, people are going to start asking similar questions around robots, which is an interesting question. It is. It is. Let me ask you a final question then, which is, what is the most important thing? We haven't talked about that we should have talked about as it relates to all of the work in these tangential subjects. Oh, I can't answer that. That perhaps the most important thing is finding the trigger that will help you to take a step forward into faith, into the Christian faith. And I would just encourage you to keep asking your questions in the open way you've done. And I have regarded it an honour to have this discussion. And I hope very much it will be the last one, but age may prevent that. But thank you very much. We have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next, not knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question that's left for you. In a world with so many challenges, what can we do to restore hope and trigger engagement? Give people a real basis for hope that transcends this world. And the only place I know where to find that is in Christ and in Christianity. John, thank you. One of the most compelling arguments for God that you've presented and your way of seeing the world and being is not actually necessarily anything you've written in your books or not necessarily anything you've said. It is actually you and you have a certain peace and contentment that I rarely see in people that I interview, but I often see and I've almost always seen in the Christians that I've interviewed. And this is a interesting phenomenon for me. I interviewed Wesley Huff recently. Do you know Wesley Huff? Yes. He was the same. Canadian. You can Wesley, so bright cookie. Yeah. He was very much, he gave me the same feeling as you. Just like, feels like a really happy person. Very sort of content rounded well. There are many of us. Yeah. But it seems to be a trend that, you know, a lot of the Christian apologists that I've interviewed have that, but anchoring that. Yeah. So many of us are looking for. There's a real sense of that. You know, I sit in front of many people and of course they often ask me questions. I don't even understand, but in life, that peace is very important to me. And also what we started with. When I look at you, I see someone who's of infinite value made in the image of God. And so what I say to you, or think about you, is hugely important to me. And I wish you well. Thank you. I highly recommend, I mean, you've written so many books. I don't have all of them here, but I have a long list of them. But I highly recommend everybody goes and checks out your autobiography, which is your most recent works. Yeah. It's called John Lannex. I'm going to link it below. It's a spiritual and intellectual autobiography that I think is highly fascinating to read because of how diverse your thinking and skill sets are. But also this wonderful, I mean, you wrote, if people are interested in the subject of AI, then I highly recommend it. Then they should read 2084. I'll link 2084 below as well, that's 2084, artificial intelligence in the future of humanity. And I highly recommend everybody goes and reads both books because you are a truly fascinating person with a very unique skill stack and experience stack and perspective. Fascinating. Thank you so much, John. Oh, thank you.