The Time John Lennox Was Pressured To Give Up His Christianity By Cambridge Academia
by John Lennox, The Good Book:
Stephen Weinberg, a Physics Nobel Prize winner once said, “The world needs to wake up from the long nightmare of religion. Anything we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done, and may in fact be our greatest contribution to civilisation.”
I hope you didn’t miss the rather sinister-sounding totalitarian element in this statement: “anything we scientists can do…”
This attitude is not new. I first met it fifty years ago while studying at Cambridge University. I found myself at a formal college dinner sitting beside another Nobel Prize winner. I had never met a scientist of such distinction before and, in order to gain the most from the conversation, I tried to ask him some questions. For instance, how did his science shape his worldview—his big picture of the status and meaning of the universe? In particular, I was interested in whether his wide-ranging studies had led him to reflect on the existence of God.
He told me, “If you want a career in science, you must give up this childish faith in God.”
It was clear that he was not comfortable with that question, and I immediately backed off. However, at the end of the meal, he invited me to come to his study. He had also invited two or three other senior academics but no other students. I was invited to sit, and, so far as I recall, they remained standing.
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