SPEAKER_02

If you took every holy book, every holy book there's ever been and hid them or destroyed them, then you took every science book and destroyed that. In a thousand years' time, those science books would be back exactly the same. Because the tests would always turn out the same.

unknown

Right.

SPEAKER_02

Those religious books will either never exist or they'd be totally different. Because there's no test.

SPEAKER_01

Little time delay or something?

SPEAKER_02

No, it's just it's just in the throat, that's all.

SPEAKER_00

I love Ricky Gervais's comedy, The Office is one of my all-time favorite sitcoms, and I love when he talks about God because he puts faith conversations on the map. We're going to watch Ricky Gervais on the First We Feast channel try ever hotter hot wings, and we'll see Ricky Gervais take aim at God and miss badly in five different ways. But first, let's get into the definitional issue: what actually is an atheist? Sean Evans asks him this.

SPEAKER_01

You've been such an eloquent defender of atheism, but it's interesting because atheism, you know, no one's gonna do a crusade. It's not like they're gonna send missionaries to spread the atheism gospel.

SPEAKER_02

No. Well, most religious people are totally fine and normal people. They believe in a god that I don't. When we say a religious fundamentalist, it's a person who believes the mag in the Bible too.

SPEAKER_01

But it's clear that you think that the world would be a better place if there are more atheists.

SPEAKER_00

That's good from Sean Evans. He's pressing Ricky to face. Why are you being so evangelistic about your atheism? Here's what Ricky says.

SPEAKER_02

Well, it's nothing to do with being an atheist. There shouldn't even be a word for atheism. There's not a word for not believing in fairies. Where are all these people being persecuted? Do you believe in fairies? No. Rapist? Baby eater? Satanist? Do you know what I mean? It's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is atheism in a nutshell. One person says, there's a god. An atheist says, can you prove that? They say, no. The atheist says, I don't believe you. That's it. That's all it is.

SPEAKER_00

We're clearly toggling between two different definitions of atheism here. Is atheism the metaphysical commitment to naturalism, that there is nothing but matter in motion and everything else is false? Then that is a positive claim that needs to be defended, or is atheism just lacking a belief in a god? In which case it's probably better named agnosticism, and all such agnostics really ought not to be so evangelistic about it. And Sean Evans is saying, Ricky Gervais, you act as though your atheism is a positive claim that needs to be forwarded in the world. But when challenged on that, I do think Ricky Gervais retreats to a more modest claim that all atheism is, is just the lack of a belief in God, which I think is closer to agnosticism. And I do think that Ricky Gervaise has a much more positive position than simply agnosticism. He first imagines a universe in which there are multiple humans who are debating about the existence of God or not, and they are being moved by reason and evidence and rhetoric and emotion and language, and one of them makes a claim for a god and the other one doubts that claim for a god. And he claims that his atheism is simply to identify with that doubter. I've got a couple of problems with that. One problem is that the other guy might be a doubter as well. The other guy doubts naturalism. The other guy might doubt Islam. He might doubt Hinduism, he might doubt Buddhism, he might doubt nihilism. Both guys are actually doubters, but they're living in a universe that is shaped by reason and rhetoric and emotion and faith claims and whether they are warranted or not. The whole setup that Ricky Gervaise is assuming is a setup that is richly theological, actually. It involves persons in relationship with one another. It involves reason and reasoning. It involves these conscious agents who are trying to decide what is true using their minds, using rationality, using evidence. And if that is indeed the universe we live in, I don't think that universe is best explained by naturalism. And this is a problem we'll return to with Ricky Gervais. He seems to be assuming a very theological sounding universe while claiming all the time to be an atheist. But let's see it. Let's see the claim that Ricky Gervais is making, and I want to identify five problems with it. Here he goes.

SPEAKER_02

You see, if you took every holy book, every holy book there's ever been, every religious book, every bits of spirituality, and hid them or destroyed them. Okay? They went away and never, right? And then you took every science book and destroyed that. In a thousand years' time, those science books would be back exactly the same. Because the tests would always turn out the same. Right. Those religious books will either never exist or they'd be totally different. Because there's no there's no test. Little time delay or something? No, it's just it's just in the throat, I saw that one.

SPEAKER_00

Because there's no test, what makes science so superior to faith claims is its testability. And all I want to do is just ask five questions about this testability test and whether the testability test stands up to testing. And the first thing I want to do is look around us and just ask in the field of human knowledge, is the testability test the right kind of test? If we ask ourselves, what am I warranted to believe in this world, what can I claim to be true? Is scientific testability the right test to apply? One way of asking it is, does testability work for everything? And the answer to that question is an obvious no. If you destroyed all the novels in the world, you would not get them back in a thousand years' time, or the poetry or the drama, all literature would be gone and gone forever. Or what about eyewitness testimony? If you got rid of all eyewitness testimony, you took away the books in a thousand years' time, you have lost all eyewitness testimony, which means you've lost a lot of legal precedents and legal truths as well, which means the foundations for the legal system is gone completely. You've also lost all history if you lose all the books. You're not going to be able to rewrite the history books in a thousand years' time. And then press even further, in a thousand years time, are we going to get the same philosophy books back? Even in disciplines like logic, are we going to have modal logic in a thousand years time? If so, which kind of modal logic? What about moral systems and moral truths? Are we going to get every kind of philosophy back in a thousand years' time? Are we going to get history back? Are we going to get literature back? And even within science, are we going to get string theory and quantum gravity and dark matter and all these things? So as we look around, we have to ask the question, is testability universal? Does it helpfully tell us what we are warranted to believe in the here and now? And I don't think it's a very applicable test. The testability test is not very universal when you look around. Secondly, we should probably look backwards and we should ask the question, does testability work in history? And of course, for Ricky Gervais to say that history textbooks remain the same over a thousand years is, on the face of it, a ridiculous thing to claim. Science textbooks change every decade, certainly every half a century. The science that you are taught in one textbook does not remain the same century after century after century. Not at all. That is not the history of science. So to imagine that in a thousand years' time the textbooks would be the same is really a quite remarkable faith claim, and we'll get to that. But a thousand years ago, the textbooks taught that the Earth is the center of the universe, that planets move in perfect circles, that the heavens are unchanging, and that every heavenly body that is up there must be directly being caused to move moment by moment. There was no concept of impetus. There was just the direct action of the gods or of these heavenly bodies that are moving these planetary objects around. That's what the textbooks taught, and largely they taught it by authority. Aristotle taught this, and people trusted Aristotle. But it was the people of the book, the people who dedicated themselves to the scriptures, who got it into their heads that tradition can be wrong and belief structures can be challenged. It was actually the people of the book who had studied the text and discovered not only laws of grammar within the text, but also laws of justice, laws of morality that can be extrapolated from studying this area, applied more generically, and then instances of that justice can be discovered in other realms of learning. The people who studied the book like that were the people who started to study the world like that. Francis Bacon, one of the pioneers of the modern scientific method, said there are two books that God has given to us, the book of Scripture and the Book of the World. And it was the people who had gotten used to studying the scriptures, finding laws within them that can be more universally applied. It was those people who, when studying the world, found instances of regularities and then discovered that there were rules that were ruling those regularities, laws of nature. But a thousand years ago, the textbooks all put the Earth at the center of the universe, and the orbits were all in perfect circles. And then people like Copernicus came along and said, Oh no, I I think actually the sun is at the center, not the earth. And then Kepler came along and said, I don't think the orbits are circular, I think they are elliptical. And then Newton came along and said, I think they are all obeying laws of gravity. And these were Christians, these were people of the book that were making discoveries about the world. As David Bentley Hart has said, in the 16th and 17th centuries, Christian scientists educated in Christian universities and following a Christian tradition of scientific and mathematical speculation overturned a pagan cosmology and physics and arrived at conclusions that would have been unimaginable within the confines of the ancient Greek scientific traditions. And these scientists were doing their science for very Christian reasons. Copernicus told us why he did his science. He did it in order to know the mighty works of God, to comprehend the wonderful workings of his laws. Surely all this must be a pleasing and acceptable mode of worship to the Most High. Kepler told us why he did his science and why he considered that humans can do science. He said geometry is unique and eternal, a reflection of the mind of God. That men are able to participate in it is one of the reasons why man is an image of God. And Isaac Newton said this most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent, powerful being. Look back a thousand years at the textbooks, and those textbooks were very different. The reason why our textbooks are different today is because of Christians at Christian universities for very Christian reasons. So Ricky Gervais says that all human knowledge should pass the testability test. And I'm saying let's look around. That kind of testability test does not work for all kinds of modes of inquiry. Let's look backwards and let's realize that the textbooks were very different a thousand years ago, and that Christians had the predominant shaping role in moving us from a pre-scientific to a scientific age. But thirdly, let's look beneath and let's ask the question. What are the foundations for Ricky Gervais's test? He says that the test of whether something is worth believing or not is whether it is testable. It is a testability test. Well, let's ask the question. Is the testability test testable? Can we do the thought experiment that Ricky Gervaise is suggesting? And the answer is a very obvious no. We can't do the thought experiment that Ricky Gervaise is suggesting. He wants to be evidence based. He wants to be empirical. He wants to do experiments, so he gives to us a thought experiment. Imagine all the books are taken away, and a thousand years hence, imagine what would then be written. Is that, as an experiment, is that actually something you can run? Obviously not. And is this testability test itself testable? It is not testable. It is in fact an assertion. Ricky Gervais is asserting what he thinks the universe is like and how he thinks the universe will operate in a thousand years time. His assertion is not testable, but he says that testability is the test that you ought to use. What do you call that? I call that a contradiction. In fact, it's a performative contradiction. He is contradicting himself even as he suggests the test for true knowledge. So look around, the testability test doesn't work. Look back in history, the testability test didn't work. Look beneath and the testability test itself is not testable. And then look forwards. Will the testability test work in the future? To say that it will is of course a faith claim. Ricky Gervaise has great faith. What does he have faith in? He has faith that the universe is the sort of universe in which there is a regularity up there, in which there are human minds that are capable of understanding that regularity, and that there is a dependable world that you can test, and that you can triangulate the regularities up there with our minds in here and a regulated world out there. Science depends on that regularity, which prompted people like C. S. Lewis to say this is why we got the modern scientific method within Christian universities, as Christian natural philosophers studied the world for very Christian reasons. Men became scientific, said C. S. Lewis, because they expected laws in nature, and they expected laws in nature because they believed in a legislator, in a lawgiver. Alfred North Whitehead, the great mathematician, said, We got modern science from Christian natural philosophers because of, he says, the widespread faith in the possibility of science derivative from medieval theology. You need to believe that there is an orderly regulator up here, and that the human mind is somehow fit to understand the mysteries of this legislator, and that this world is not alien either to God or to humans, but that there is a fittingness such that those three can be triangulated. Albert Einstein called this the miracle of comprehensibility. The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility. The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle. And Ricky Gervais seems to believe in this miracle. In fact, he believes in this miracle so strongly that in a thousand years' time, of course, reality will operate like this. And I say I admire your faith, Ricky Gervais. In fact, I recognize your faith. It is a particularly Christian-ish sounding faith. Which just leads me to say, fifthly, I think we all need to look up. I think we all need to understand the kind of universe that Ricky Gervais is describing. He's describing something that is beautifully laid out on page one of the Bible. You have an orderly God up above who through his word brings into being a creation, and then setting humanity over this creation and saying, rule and have dominion. These creatures are in the image of God, which as Kepler has reminded us, means that we have some chance of grasping the regularities above us and of being able to have dominion and press out into a world out there. The triangulation is taught on page one of the Bible, and it really comes to a head on page one of John's gospel. In the beginning was the word, it's the Greek word logos, which is related to the word logic. In the beginning there was rationality, there was word, there was mind. In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made. Without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. Here is a rational, orderly God bringing into being a rational, orderly world, and then in John chapter 1, verse 14, the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only God who came from the Father full of grace and truth. In the incarnation of the Word, we have the ultimate foundations for science. Apparently, humanity has some kind of capacity for divine rationality. And apparently, God has some kind of interest in this world, and especially in humans. And John says, we have seen his glory, and then John writes that down in a book, and we've been meditating on that book not for a thousand years, but for two thousand years. And it has brought about the most extraordinary expansion in human knowledge and understanding, including the pioneering of the modern scientific method. Modern secular people are tending to want to do what Ricky Gervais is suggesting, that we get rid of the religious books. But even as people are ignorant of the books and ignorant of the Jesus story, we still have the sense that we live in this kind of a universe. And the success of the scientific method has made us believe that this might indeed be the sort of universe that Einstein said we live in, that Kepler said we live in, that Newton said we live in. But this is a very rich theological universe. We are now having some very theological thoughts about the universe. But the Ricky Gervaisers of this world are able to tell themselves that these are not theological thoughts, they're just obvious and natural and universal. They can only say that such thoughts about the world are obvious, natural, and universal because of the success of the scientific method. But what is the success of the scientific method? Well, let me leave you with this thought. Essentially, it is testing this one hypothesis that the world is exactly as miraculous as Einstein said it is. Imagine a scientific endeavor in which you want to test the hypothesis. Is the world really as open to the scientific method as Einstein says it is, as Kepler says it is, as Newton says it is? Is the world so open to the scientific method that even in a thousand years' time we will get all that science back? So regular is this world, so amazing are human minds, so immutable are the laws up above. Do we really live in such a universe? And every single scientific advance for the last 500 years has confirmed the hypothesis. Every time we have done science and it has worked, we have confirmed the hypothesis that this world is as miraculous as Einstein said it is. So Ricky Gervais, after you have looked around and after you've looked backwards, after you've looked beneath, after you've looked forwards, I invite you to look up. Because it's the God of that old book that makes sense of the science that you love. And if you want to look up and find some of the reasons why science in fact works, why don't you do 321? It studies the threeness of God, the two-ness of the world, the oneness of you. It is life according to Jesus. Go to 321course.com, start an account, and you're in. It's free, we won't spam you, but it is your opportunity to see all things through the lens of Jesus. Well, if you've got this far on the video, it must be worth a like. Please do like the video, please do share it around and subscribe to us so that we can catch you on the next one. God bless.