John Lennox on Dawkins, Meaning, AI and the Return of the Sacred

Unbelievable?

Premier Unbelievable?

Christianity, Religion & Spirituality

4.7 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 2 June 2026

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

As Oxford mathematician and Christian apologist John Lennox prepares to appear on The Diary of a CEO, he joins Luke Martin on Unbelievable to reflect on his extraordinary life and the questions that have shaped a generation. From Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Peter Singer to Alex O’Connor, AI, social media, suffering, marriage and Christian hope, Lennox looks back on the rise and fall of New Atheism and the renewed cultural interest in Christianity. He explains why thinkers such as Tom Holland and Iain McGilchrist are helping people reconsider the Christian story, why he finally decided to write his autobiography, My Story, and why today’s deepest questions have shifted from “science versus faith” to meaning, purpose, identity and the sacred. In this wide-ranging conversation, Lennox reflects on a lifetime of engaging sceptics with truth and grace, and argues that Christianity still makes sense in 2026. If you’d like a copy of My Story, listeners can get 25% off with the code MYSTORY25 at checkout. In the UK and internationally, visit spckpublishing.co.uk/my-story - SPCK Publishing’s My Story page - and enter MYSTORY25 for 25% off. For listeners in the USA, visit indiepubs.com or go directly to Indie Pubs’ My Story page and use the same code, MYSTORY25, to receive 25% off at checkout. Buy John Lennox’s new autobiography, My Story: https://amzn.to/4fnv3Dh Subscribe & Support 👉 Support thought-provoking conversations and help keep the show going at www.premierunbelievable.com/geolink/donate💡 🎧 Never miss an episode! Subscribe to the Unbelievable? podcast at www.premier.plus/unbelievable 🎙️ 🔗 Get bonus content, updates, fascinating articles, and early access to new episodes - absolutely free! Join now at www.premierunbelievable.com 📢 Follow us Instagram: https://instagram.com/premierunbelievable Facebook: https://facebook.com/premierunbelievable Tik Tok: https://tiktok.com/@premier.unbelievable X: https://x.com/UnbelievableFE

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Premier Unbelievable. I'm Luke Martin and today my guest is fellow Northern Irishman,
0:06.0	Professor John Lennox. John is an emeritus professor of mathematics at Oxford University.
0:13.0	He's an author and a speaker. He rose to fame through his big debates with people like Richard Dawkins
0:20.0	and Christopher Hitchens about 15 to 20 years ago.
0:22.6	We're here to discuss his autobiography, which is just out.
0:27.6	John Lennox, My Story, a spiritual and intellectual autobiography.
0:31.6	So we discussed his debates with people like Dawkins,
0:35.6	AI, marriage, his friendship with Alex O'Connor, and the
0:40.9	problem of suffering. I hope you enjoy. John Lennox, welcome to Premier Unbelievable.
0:49.2	Thank you very much. Glad to be with you. So John, I've read most of your book and I'm loving it,
0:56.8	loving all the Northern Irish references. And we've known each other a bit over the last
1:03.2	over a decade now, but there's plenty of material about you in this book that I didn't know.
1:08.8	I didn't know about the material your time in Eastern
1:12.0	Europe. So it made me wonder, what really prompted you to write this autobiography? What were you
1:20.5	trying to communicate through John? Well, for a long time, I didn't really wish to write an autobiography, although many, many people
1:31.7	encouraged me to do so. But I didn't like the word auto. If you're writing about yourself,
1:37.5	and that's a risky business. The danger is that you distort things sometimes unconsciously.
1:46.8	And it can very easily result in an ego trip.
1:51.8	So for a long time, that was a stance I held until one day I was reading Acts chapter 14,
2:00.7	where Luke records Paul is coming back to Antioch
2:05.2	and it says that he talked to the church there about all that quote the Lord had done with
2:15.4	them and it suddenly struck me that if Paul felt that it was good to share what he believed the Lord
	...

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