Gunning for God Quotes

“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, Gunning for God: Why the New Atheists are missing the target

“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, Gunning for God: Why the New Atheists are missing the target

“Czeslaw Milosz, who had reason to know, writes: “A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death — the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders, we are not going to be judged.”54 Thus, if God does exist, atheism can be seen as a psychological escape mechanism to avoid taking ultimate responsibility for one’s own life.”
― John C. Lennox, Gunning for God: Why the New Atheists are missing the target

“Hawking’s inadequate view of God could well be linked with his attitude to philosophy in general. He writes: “Philosophy is dead.”9 But this itself is a philosophical statement. It is manifestly not a statement of science. Therefore, because it says that philosophy is dead, it contradicts itself. It is a classic example of logical incoherence. Not only that: Hawking’s book, insofar as it is interpreting and applying science to ultimate questions like the existence of God, is a book about metaphysics — philosophy par excellence.”
― John C. Lennox, Gunning for God: Why the New Atheists are missing the target

“This brings us to a key issue that is very easily overlooked. It is this. Faith in God certainly is a delusion, if God does not exist. But what if God does exist? Then atheism is the delusion. So the real question to ask is: does God exist?”
― John C. Lennox, Gunning for God: Why the New Atheists are missing the target

“Un libro sobre el sufrimiento que no diga nada acerca del cielo está dejando fuera casi por completo una cara de la moneda. Las Escrituras y la tradición colocan habitualmente en la balanza los gozos del cielo frente al sufrimiento en la tierra, y toda solución al problema del dolor que no haga eso no puede denominarse cristiana. Hoy en día nos da mucha vergüenza mencionar el cielo. Nos asusta que se burlen de nuestros “castillos en el aire”... pero o hay castillo en el aire o no lo hay. Si no lo hay, entonces el cristianismo es falso, porque esta doctrina se entreteje en todo su tejido. Si lo hay, entonces esta verdad, como cualquier otra, debe enfrentarse...”
― John C. Lennox, Disparando contra Dios: Por qué los nuevos ateos no dan en el blanco

“The delightful irony of all this is that if we for a moment (but only for a moment) adopt the New Atheists’ definition of faith as blind belief, then their atheism seems in prime position to be the only true faith around.”
― John C. Lennox, Gunning for God: Why the New Atheists are missing the target

“Not surprisingly, the New Atheists find the resurrection as laughable as their Epicurean antecedents did. At the culmination of the “God Delusion” debate in Alabama, when I mentioned the resurrection, Richard Dawkins responded in amazement at what he thought was my naiveté: “So we come down to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It’s so petty; it’s so trivial; it’s so local; it’s so earthbound; it’s so unworthy of the universe.” I found this an astonishingly illogical outburst, for the naiveté was not mine. If Dawkins had simply affirmed his belief that Jesus did not rise from the dead, I would have understood it. However, to say that the resurrection is petty, trivial, and earthbound is to betray a profound failure to grasp what the resurrection is and what it implies. Petty, trivial, and earthbound are exactly what the resurrection isn’t — if it happened. It is atheism, with its oblivion at death, that makes us earthbound, petty, and trivial. If Jesus rose from the dead, it demonstrates that he is very much not earthbound but God the Creator incarnate. As for “unworthy of the universe”, the question should be: is the universe worthy of him?”
― John C. Lennox, Gunning for God: Why the New Atheists are missing the target

“Las leyes físicas no pueden crear nada por su cuenta; son una simple descripción (matemática) de lo que acontece habitualmente bajo ciertas condiciones dadas.”
― John C. Lennox, Disparando contra Dios: Por qué los nuevos ateos no dan en el blanco

“El efecto ventajoso de la creencia religiosa y la espiritualidad sobre la salud mental y física es uno de los secretos mejor guardados en la psiquiatría y la medicina en general.”
― John C. Lennox, Disparando contra Dios: Por qué los nuevos ateos no dan en el blanco

“Some will take issue, however, with the idea that the resurrection body of Christ is physical, by pointing out that the New Testament itself speaks of the resurrection body as a “spiritual body”.110 The objection, then, asserts that “spiritual” means “non-physical”. But a moment’s reflection shows that there are other possibilities. When we speak of a “petrol engine”, we do not mean an “engine made of petrol”. No, we mean an engine powered by petrol. Thus the term “spiritual body” could well be referring to the power behind that body’s life, rather than a description of what it is made of.”
― John C. Lennox, Gunning for God: Why the New Atheists are missing the target