John C. Lennox Quotes & Sayings

[ ... ] a view that we call "scientism" : and that is that science is the only way to truth, now that is just logically false, because the statement "science is the only way to truth" is not a statement of science, so if it's true, it's false. Perhaps it's too late at night for logic like that is it ?
[watch?v=lf1T8ouVQ-g - 14m50] — John C. Lennox

We are a product of quantum fluctuations in the very early universe. — John C. Lennox

The story of Daniel and his friends is a clarion call to our generation to be courageous; not to lose our nerve and allow the expression of our faith to be diluted and squeezed out of the public space and thus rendered spineless and ineffective. Their story will also tell us that this objective is not likely to be achieved without cost. — John C. Lennox

To the majority of those who have reflected deeply and written about the origin and nature of the universe, it has seemed that it points beyond itself to a source which is non-physical and of great intelligence and power. — John C. Lennox

For, the statement that only science can lead to truth is not itself deduced from science. It is not a scientific statement but rather a statement about science, that is, it is a metascientific statement. Therefore, if scientism's basic principle is true, the statement expressing scientism must be false. Scientism refutes itself. Hence it is incoherent. — John C. Lennox

The very success of science in showing us how deeply ordered the natural world is provides strong grounds for believing that there is an even deeper cause for that order. — John C. Lennox

The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible. — John C. Lennox

Johannes Kepler described his motivation thus: 'The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order which has been imposed on it by God, and which he revealed to us in the language of mathematics. — John C. Lennox

And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way towards him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us. (Acts 17:26 — John C. Lennox

In this very brief history of modern cosmological physics, the laws of quantum and relativistic physics represent things to be wondered at but widely accepted: just like biblical miracles. M-theory invokes something different: a prime mover, a begetter, a creative force that is everywhere and nowhere. This force cannot be identified by instruments or examined by comprehensible mathematical prediction, and yet it contains all possibilities. It incorporates omnipresence, omniscience and omnipotence, and it's a big mystery. Remind you of Anybody?49 — John C. Lennox

We can therefore express the major elements in the New Atheists' agenda as follows: Religion is a dangerous delusion: it leads to violence and war. We must therefore get rid of religion: science will achieve that. We do not need God to be good: atheism can provide a perfectly adequate base for ethics. — John C. Lennox

It is crucial that a healthy scepticism be applied when interpreting potentially miraculous events, lest the integrity and rationality of the religious perspective be brought into question. The only thing that will kill the possibility of miracles more quickly than a committed materialism is the claiming of miracle status for everyday events for which natural explanations are readily at hand.4 — John C. Lennox

It would be a pity if, in a desire (rightly) to treat the Bible as more than a book, we ended up treating it as less than a book by not permitting it the range and use of language, order, and figures of speech that are (or ought to be) familiar to us from our ordinary experience of conversation and reading. — John C. Lennox

Society tolerates the practice of the Christian faith in private devotions and in church services, but it increasingly deprecates public witness. — John C. Lennox

In China we can criticize Darwin, but not the government; in America you can criticize the government, but not Darwin. — John C. Lennox

The issue between the atheist and the believer is not whether it makes sense to question ultimate fact, it is rather the question: what fact is ultimate? The atheist's ultimate fact is the universe; the theist's ultimate fact is God.68 — John C. Lennox

But in some quarters the very success of science has also led to the idea that, because we can understand the mechanisms of the universe without bringing in God, we can safely conclude that there was no God who designed and created the universe in the first place. — John C. Lennox

Whether you believe in Jesus, Buddha, the Beatles, crystals, mother earth, or anything else that takes your interest, all are held to be on the same footing; all have equal validity for the relativist. — John C. Lennox

It's much easier, after all, to learn mathematics from someone who's made a few mistakes. It's impossible to learn it from someone who always gets it right. — John C. Lennox

Judah had failed to grasp that God's loyalty to his own character, and therefore to his own creatures, has serious implications. Some of Judah's leaders had fallen into thinking that, because their nation had been chosen to play a special role for God in history, it did not really matter how the leaders or the nation behaved. This was dangerously irresponsible and undermined the moral fibre of the people, because it led to the rationalization of corrupt and immoral behaviour that was incompatible with the law of God, albeit widely practised in the surrounding nations. — John C. Lennox

This world is not going to be trampled and smashed by brutal, amoral regimes for ever. A day will come when God will bring to an end the state war-machines, the terrorist bombs, the consummate evil of totalitarian oppression, the gas chambers, death camps, killing fields, and countless other infamous instruments of death. There will be a judgment. — John C. Lennox

Faith is not a leap in the dark; it's the exact opposite. It's a commitment based on evidence ... It is irrational to reduce all faith to blind faith and then subject it to ridicule. That provides a very anti-intellectual and convenient way of avoiding intelligent discussion. — John C. Lennox

Is the world divided into mind and matter, and, if so, what is mind, what is matter? Is mind subject to matter, or is it possessed of independent powers? Has the universe any unity or purpose? Is it evolving towards some goal? Are there really laws of nature, or do we believe in them only because of our innate love of order? Is man what he seems to the astronomer, a tiny lump of impure carbon and water impotently crawling on a small and unimportant planet? Or is he what he appears to Hamlet? Is there a way of living that is noble and another that is base, or are all ways of living merely futile? ... To such questions no answers can be found in the laboratory.'23 — John C. Lennox

It is rather ironical that in the sixteenth century some people resisted advances in science because they seemed to threaten belief in God; whereas in the twentieth century scientific ideas of a beginning have been resisted because they threatened to increase the plausibility of belief in God. — John C. Lennox

We should be humble enough to distinguish between what the Bible says and our interpretations of it. — John C. Lennox

Indeed, faith is a response to evidence, not a rejoicing in the absence of evidence. — John C. Lennox

To postulate a trillion-trillion other universes, rather than one God, in order to explain the orderliness of our universe, seems the height of irrationality. — John C. Lennox

Nonsense remains nonsense, even when talked by world-famous scientists. — John C. Lennox

The more we get to know about our universe, the more the hypothesis that there is a Creator God, who designed the universe for a purpose, gains in credibility as the best explanation of why we are here. — John C. Lennox

The world of strict naturalism in which clever mathematical laws all by themselves bring the universe and life into existence, is pure (and, one might add, poor) fiction. To call it science-fiction would besmirch the name of science. — John C. Lennox