Stephen Law discusses with Denis Alexander whether science is compatible with faith on Unbelievable? radio

source: Premiere Christian Radio at Unbelievable? with Justin Brierley (UK Christians discuss with Atheists on radio on Saturdays, 2.30-4pm)


My very rough notes!!...

At 26' Stephen introduces his Evil v Good God Hypothesis. If you look at the world their is much evil and this might lead us to conclude that their is an all powerful evil god - except that there is a lot of happiness and love and rainbows in the world so that therefore the Evil God could not exist. Similarly for a Good God. So much love and happiness but also much evil so how can a good god exist? 100s of millions of years of suffering even before Sentient inhabitants came along.

36 mins: Moral Evil arguement.

Why is good god hypothesis any better than evil god hypothesis.

39mins: Fine tuning argument.- what are the chances that universe is just right for life? Objective v Epistemic probability. Martin Rees - fundamental forces - anthropic argument (epistemic argument) is NOT the Epistemic argument!  Multiverse argument: - push argument so get around the fine tuning argument cf Fred Hoyle and Big Bang.Paul Davies fine tuning arguement - matrix universe or alien. Agent explanation - supernatural - Supreme mind is the best explanation.

50mins: Stephen claims he does not have any materilastic supersistions.  Globally only 15% of philosophers are theistic and only 50% are committed to Naturalism and Stephen is open to arguements that there may be more than the material / natural world ie he is open to possibility of supernatural world.. but he is not remotely convinced that there is a super-being out there! How can an agent not be temporal cf mountain.cf guilt of a nation - earthquake. Dennis playing the mystery card. The good and evil god hypothesis are both hugely improbable and indeed their is a good evidence that there is no god! God is not just a plug in our gap of understanding.

Test of Faith is an initiative aimed at showing that Christian faith and good science are perfectly compatible.  As the Tour reaches london on 19th May we ask "Do we need God, now that we have science?"

Denis Alexander is a biologist from the Faraday Insititute in Cambridge.  As a Christian he believes that his science coheres with and supports his faith.  Stephen Law of the Royal Institute of Philosophy believes that science together with philosophy can be used to refute the existence of God.

They discuss Evolution, the problem of evil,  the God of the Gaps, the cosmological and fine tuning arguments for the existence of God and more besides.