Returning to Birmingham from Oxford, England and my meeting with Richard Dawkins, we went to work preparing for an event that I believed would attract a lot of attention. But not everybody thought that.
Returning to Birmingham from Oxford, England and my meeting with Richard Dawkins, we went to work preparing for an event that I believed would attract a lot of attention. But not everybody thought that.
Originally Published on December 1st, 2007 Read Part 1 of this series herePart 2Part 3Part 4Part 5 Twelve years ago, Larry got the wild idea of bringing notorious atheist and Oxford evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, to Birmingham, Alabama for a debate on the central tenets of his bestseller, The God
The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”
—Richard Dawkins in Scientific American, November 1995
“No matter how high science may be, it is only too clear that Jesus Christ did not come to save men by science or philosophy; he came to save all men — even philosophers and scientists.”
— Etienne Gilson (1884-1978)
I returned to Birmingham, Alabama from Oxford, England and hit the ground running. John Lennox had expressed openness to my invitation but he had made no commitments. Before he would do so, he wanted me to demonstrate that I was “serious” about what I had proposed…
I have always said that the backstory to the debates between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox, four in all, is at least as interesting as the debates themselves, if not more so. For every minute that they spent with each other on stage – Richard certainly would not tolerate John’s company anywhere else – I spent many more with each of them off stage…
“I don’t usually do debates,” atheist Oxford Professor of Evolutionary Biology Richard Dawkins told John Lennox, himself a Christian and an Oxford Professor of Pure Mathematics and Philosophy of Science. It was October 3rd, 2007. The two men were backstage waiting to be introduced to a capacity crowd at the