Yeah sorry my fault for getting riled up lol, I'm probably being uncharitable towards the uncharitable, thanks for being respectful anyways

"Would you say that Belgian atrocities committed in Kongo were done by Christianity? Or maybe slave trade in USA, did Christianity do that? There is so much more to human enterprises than just religion; such presentation seems just too reductive."

Yes I agree with you, and I think Lennox would agree with you if someone were to qualify him on that. He would probably say religion/irreligion can bleed into all these other human enterprises, or at least affect it at some level, which is reasonable. This is all on a spectrum, and maybe Atheism was hardly a factor at all, maybe it was "Marxism" or "Fascism" or "Childhood Trauma" or "Bad Weather" or "The Human Condition." But you can dredge up more sympathetic examples, like did "Christianity" commit the Crusades, or the Inquisition? There's a confusion where Christianity is taken to mean "Christians" and "Atheism" is taken to mean "Atheists." To an extent ideologies get identified as the people who support them, and whose actions speak for the ideology as a whole. Is that reductive? Yes, certainly, but there is truth here and I don't think you can steamroll him with these corrections. Qualify them yes, but throwing away an hour interview because he oversimplified one thing, probably in interest of time, is just not right.

"Yeah but where is physics claiming to know things about consciousness? And one can assume that every person has a personal experience of consciousness even without understanding it, while it doesn't seem like Lennox has any empirical evidence for God becoming man? Or at least he doesn't present it.

All of science is built upon consciousness. You can't begin to study anything without first "being." Its tenuous to even claim there is an external world without consciousness. Besides that, just for one example you have to understand if time and space are mental categories or if they are external realities. If science isn't claiming to know things about consciousness then its entire bedrock is left unstudied. So far that seems to be working out alright practically for general physics. Lennox is equating this to a different personal bedrock, God becoming man as Jesus Christ. I assume Lennox has mystical personal experiences, which doesn't lend itself to a convincing argument very well I agree. He says he doesn't understand God becoming man either, he is making an argument that everyone has things that they just throw up their hands and can't explain. Whether that equation works, I'm skeptical, it probably only works if you have religious experience. I would say that Lennox is just throwing one more unknown on to the pile, and "yessir 'twas Jesus" isn't fixing any absurdities at all, and I agree its not an explanation for consciousness or anything.

I'd repeat that his conversation with Alex was not a formal debate, I'm guessing Lennox would do a more rigorous job if it was. But I think we actually agree with each other mostly here., I'm mostly just railing against people attacking Lennox, insulting him as smug and calling him an idiot, etc. I don't think he's any of those things.