Professor John Lennox, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. Are science and religion in conflict?

I don't really think so. And I've had that impression actually for a very long time in the sense that when I was at school, I started reading C.S. Lewis. My father gave me some of his books. And it was very interesting reading those books because his take on the history of science, which was based on Alfred North Whitehead, actually, was, to quote, more or less,

men became scientific because they expected law in nature, and they expected law in nature

because they believed in a lawgiver. That fascinated me, and a little bit more research showed me that if you take modern science,

I'm not talking about medieval science, modern science, and you start with people like Galileo

and then you move on to Kepler, Newton and so on, these people were all believers in God with slight variations on it. And it seemed to me

there was a pretty close connection between their theism and their approach to science. And in general

historians of science, and when I came to Oxford after a while, I worked for a time with John Hedley Brook, who was the first professor of science and religion here.

Now, a wonderful historian.

And he was very cautious, but he said there certainly does seem to be a connection between the biblical worldview and the rise of modern science. So sometimes I say

to people who ask me that question that I'm not remotely ashamed of being a scientist, if you

count mathematicians and a Christian, because arguably it was the Judeo-Christian worldview that gave me my subject.

So I think there's a deep resonance there.

And I do think there is a conflict, though, just to explain a little bit further.

But it's not between science and faith in God.

And I often illustrate this by thinking of the Nobel Prize in physics.

Because, take, for example, Higgs, Peter Higgs, you won at Scotsman, atheist, brilliant physicist.

And then there's another person I know Bill Phillips, an American Nobel Prize winner

for physics and a Christian. And what that tells me, Alex, really is this, that their difference

isn't in the realm of physics at all, her science. It's in a worldview.

And I see a real conflict between the theistic worldview and the atheistic worldview and

there are scientists on both sides. And so I feel that if we take that on board, we can make a more sensible exploration of this whole, well, I think it's a myth and a lot of historians do as well, that science and religion are necessarily in conflict. I think as a final codicil, I would say, it depends what religion you're talking about. I'm talking about

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