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Debating God With The Archbishop of Canterbury, Philip Goff, and Elizabeth Oldfield

Alex O'Connor | November 22, 2025



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– VIDEO NOTES

On November 15th at the Royal Institution in London, I was joined on stage by Rowan Williams, Elizabeth Oldfield, Philip Goff, and host Jack Symes for a discussion entitled, “Between God and Atheism”.

Rowan Williams was the 104th 104th Archbishop of Canterbury from 2002 to 2012.

Elizabeth Oldfield is a Christian writer and host of @thesacredpodcast.

Philip Goff is a professor at Durham University researching consciousness. He is a previous guest on Within Reason, and recently announced his conversion to “heretical Christianity”.

Jack Symes is a teacher and Researcher at Durham University and producer of the Panpsychist podcast.

This event was put on by the Royal Institution and supported with funding from the John Templeton Foundation, through the Panpsychism and Pan(en)theism Project (59140).

– TIMESTAMPS

0:00 Introductions
2:38 Rowan Williams’ Opening Statement
5:11 Philip Goff’s Opening Statement
8:57 Alex O’Connor’s Opening Statement
13:29 Elizabeth Oldfield’s Opening Statement
18:13 Alex and Philip Debate the Fine-Tuning Argument
26:40 Rowan and Elizabeth Responds to the Atheists
33:54 Alex and Philip on the Problem of Evil
40:39 Is Christianity About Philosophical Arguments?
51:18 Rowan and Alex Debate Gnostic Christianity
55:14 Are There Any Atheists Left?
1:00:16 Does Christianity Need to Change?
1:06:43 QnA: What is at the Core of Christianity?
1:08:31 QnA: Does The Anthropic Principle Undermine Fine-Tuning?
1:11:20 QnA: Is Life Mostly Suffering?
1:13:27 QnA: Why Christianity Over Other Religions?
1:17:08 QnA: Where Does Sin and The Fall Enter This Conversation?
1:20:27 QnA: Does Alex Think There is a Purpose in Life?

– CONNECT

My Website: https://www.alexoconnor.com

SOCIAL LINKS:

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TikTok: @CosmicSkeptic

The Within Reason Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/within-reason/id1458675168

– CONTACT

Business email: contact@alexoconnor.com

——————————————

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Written by Alex O'Connor

Comments

This post currently has 48 comments.

  10. @junkfire4554

    November 22, 2025 at 6:37 am

    Elizabeth and Phillip are on the same obnoxious, overly affected wavelength. Every sentence brimming with pretentious reverence, sometimes on the verge of tears, undercut by irritated smiles, nervous laughter and sighs from desperately forcing their points instead of letting their claims speak for themselves. Would've been an unbearable listen, if it wasn't for the grounded, calm demeanors of Alex and the Archbishop.

  11. @robbyrthomas5623

    November 22, 2025 at 6:37 am

    33:50
    I think what she’s really saying is this: I don’t know why suffering exists, and I don’t have answers to everything — but the God I believe in, Jesus, has suffered deeply Himself and promised to be with me in my pain. That’s enough for me to endure it.

    I understand why that sounds unclear to people expecting logical arguments — but she’s speaking from a place of lived emotion and humility that sits beyond logic. You can’t reason your emotions into existence, yet that doesn’t make them less real or less important.

  15. @vex4444

    November 22, 2025 at 6:37 am

    This debate would have been a million times better with just the Archbishop and Alex. Literally every minute Elizabeth and Philip spoke was a wasted minute of my life.

  19. @ididntdoit76

    November 22, 2025 at 6:37 am

    Apparently god can't create a perfect universe, only a perfect heaven in where you somehow can be happy forr eternity even if your children have been sent to hell for not worshipping god. The idea of god is a joke.

  22. @anthonyromero9935

    November 22, 2025 at 6:37 am

    I would posit that the tight constraints observed in the universe may be evidence of the limitation of the medium of universes and not necessarily limitations of the craftsman of that universe. However, we don't have access to another universe to objectively compare our physics with, although multiverse theory allows for this. It is also possible that whatever process creates a universe iterates at a very high rate and many of the universes fail because they didn't fall within certain constraints, the way some seeds may take to the soil and some seeds may not. But again, we do not have access to the observation of such theoretical attempts and failures.

    It is difficult to understand the thinking of a being more intelligent than yourself. One must assume, if we are imagining a being intelligent enough to create a universe, a creative act far beyond our capability, that being must be more intelligent than we are. Therefore it becomes very difficult to imagine how it thinks, what its motivations are. Remember we are human, God very well may not be. And so it is not just a superior intelligence we are contemplating, but an alien one as well. To judge this being based on the content of its work (the universe, the process of natural selection as we observe it) assumes that we understand its goals, assumes that we understand if it even understands its own goals, assumes that it knows the best way to achieve those goals, and assumes that we know a better way to achieve those goals. None of which are actually known. So to say that an omnipotent loving God is less likely to exist because suffering exists and the carnage of natural selection exists, is a perspective based on pure hubris — that we know better than the creator of the universe. A worthy question, in my opinion, to pursue is the 'why' does it happen, why does it work that way.

    It's not an easy question to answer if you only consider hard evidence. Some of it may require belief or faith. If you believe you are an eternal spirit, for example, it's going to be far easier for you to understand the timeline your experience is actually stretched out upon. If you believe that the vast majority of suffering ends when the body dies, and that what you retain is the wisdom of your life, you are going to have a far easier time answering the 'why are bad things allowed to happen' question.

    If you believe that you are an indestructible spirit and all your incarnate sufferings are as temporary as a movie viewing or a video game playthrough, the drama and difficulty settings of life start to make more sense. If you believe you only get one viewing or one life to play the game with, you're going to have a very different conception about suffering than someone who believes in reincarnation, which is akin to being able to watch an infinite library of movies and getting an infinite number of lives with which to play the game. And if you believe you are a spirit and you believe God created you, then I suppose that it would say something about how generous you believe God to be whether you believe you have one incarnate life or infinite. And then the question of 'what is the purpose of life' stretches out even farther, because you're not just considering the purpose of one life, but looking at the span of multiple lives, multiple bodies, multiple incarnations, multiple versions of you that you do not even know, but know must mean something. There's so many of yourselves to consider that the idea of evolution comes full circle, except it's personal. Natural selection becomes your personal journey to refine your spirit.

    The most important question is 'what are you willing to believe.' Because facts alone may not lead to the truth when the truth is much bigger than human limitation can access.

    But I will answer your worthy question "what is the purpose of suffering" to the best of my ability. As someone who has suffered through most of my life, I've spent quite a bit of time contemplating it. When you say "what is the purpose of that deer starving, confused, with the broken leg?" "What is the purpose of my mother dying of cancer?" This is my response. It was for you. You were meant to witness it. You were meant to take it in. You were meant to feel everything you've ever felt about it. The grief, the rage, the confusion, and more. You are meant to stand before God and scream "why?!" In fact, if you never did, God would know that you weren't yet ready for whatever the next step is in your journey. Your life is like a garden. Suffering is like a fertilizer. What are you growing? When I say you, I don't just mean the human that is you, I mean the eternal spirit that is you. What are YOU growing? You are growing compassion.

    Take the deer situation in a vacuum. A deer starves alone in the forest with a broken leg, what is the purpose? Now the suffering is personal for the deer. That poor deer is going through it. The suffering is sharp, it feels prolonged. It feels like torture. But finally, at last, the deer is released from suffering and dies. And, in my view, goes on. When you go through a painful situation in life, there's generally two things you do with it. 1) You hurt others the way you were hurt 2) You feel for others who experience a similar pain as you, or to pain in general you become more empathetic, more compassionate. Your spirit is refined with compassion. You continue on your journey. The same thing happens for the deer on some level.

    Imagine trying to develop compassion in a world without suffering. You can't even imagine it, that's how alien that concept is. What good is developing compassion? Why is it so important? From the human perspective, that's a fairly self-evident question to answer. Compassion is widely regarded as a desirable and virtuous trait. "Why would God want you to develop compassion" might be a slightly better question to ask. I believe it's because God wants whatever you are to grow closer to whatever God is. And that eventually, when you grow big enough, you will be able to withstand infinite suffering while radiating infinite unconditional love. And maybe that's what's required in order to not just create a universe, but also sustain it.

    God has shared every tear you ever shed. Felt every feeling as you have felt it and more with superhuman emotional depth. God is not just subjecting you to suffering, God is witnessing it with you, holding your hand, and will never let you go.

    Ah, but there is context missing, so we are confused. "Why would my spirit, who does not experience suffering, choose to incarnate into a life where suffering is a thing?"

    I have many thoughts about this. Ask yourself "Why does tension exist in storytelling? or drama? or horror?" Tension is kind of uncomfortable isn't it? Drama is kind of unbalancing isn't it, if you want to be at peace? Horror is kind of unthinkable isn't it? I mean why would I PAY to watch a movie that SCARES THE CRAP OUT OF ME? And yet, we do. For the same reason we go on rides and rollercoasters. Lives are kind of like the same thing for spirits. A medium in which to experience ups, downs, all arounds. To be part of a story. To feel comedy. To feel tragedy. Your life is the art that feeds your spirit.

    Why would someone create, let alone play a video game with war in it? War, one of the most horrific and destructive concepts that we can imagine. In a game? Isn't that morally wrong? Shouldn't we jail or execute game designers who make war games? And the same to the people who play them? Isn't the level of degenerative criminality just off the charts?

    Well no….it's just a game. We as humans know that.

    And that's kind of like what life is to you, as a spirit. Just a game. Or a movie. You know it can't hurt you. That it might be fun. It might not. You might even get something out of it. Or you might not. It's an adventure either way. It's a story to tell your spirit friends about.

  24. @uwuseokie4123

    November 22, 2025 at 6:37 am

    37:30 Alex points out not being understanding of this suffering and faiths only referring to a selection of suffering. And i always hear ppl in faith say that the suffering was necessary to see the outcome of love in it. Yet, in reality the suffering would probably not absolved or nonsensical. That rhetoric may seem it was blaming the person who suffered. One may even need to die or be harmed to cause someone elses suffering. You may learn things and so on but I cannot think why a god that has created good/bad and suffering to care. It seems to be the plan and design for you to only get absolution of the suffering from god. Only God can forgive/love so you will always go back to god. I just see this as manipulation. This is how abuse cycles are formed. Abusers will say you were already bad and put your self esteem down. They will say loving things too. They will tell you only you can be redeemed if they do certain things. Cycle continues.

    Why would god care? Why would you need love from god and why would god need love from you? Why does god feel these human/physical emotions? Why do i already have sin when i was ignorant? Etc

  27. @uwuseokie4123

    November 22, 2025 at 6:37 am

    I noticed with faith its about feeling. So it addresses needs of connection and community. Perhaps this is used in asking atheists and/or scientists why we feel love differently to animals. But that in itself is like an assumption.

  28. @09Drdray

    November 22, 2025 at 6:37 am

    O’Connor mentions The War We Never Fought and “your blog” but doesn’t cite specific arguments, passages, or statistics from those works—something Hitchens would immediately recognize as evidence of real engagement. Repetitive “what about alcohol/tobacco” lines: This line of questioning is textbook debate framing found in summaries or talking points, not in a close analysis of Hitchens’s text, which already pre-empts and rebuts those comparisons. Missed Hitchens’s own framing: Hitchens repeatedly distinguishes moral, legal, and utilitarian objections to drugs. O’Connor keeps pressing “what about alcohol?”—a question Hitchens has answered almost verbatim in his book. That would frustrate him if the interviewer claimed to have read it.

  30. @ev1677

    November 22, 2025 at 6:37 am

    That woman brings absolutely nothing to this conversation. Pretending to always been on the verge of tears and speaking slowly does not make your words profound.

  32. @lewis18051

    November 22, 2025 at 6:37 am

    I don’t think we discuss the lack of any evidence for the existence of the supernatural or magic! Every year we learn more about the universe and how it works, our understanding of the sciences advances theories are confirmed and yet we still haven’t found any evidence for the supernatural!

  33. @tiaanhaarhoff8618

    November 22, 2025 at 6:37 am

    Hey Alex, when you ask the question 'Why suffering?', what are your assumptions when asking this question? Is your assumption 'There is no God', or is your assumption 'There is a God'. Because if its the former then i geuss the answer is easy. But if the answer is the latter, wouldn't it be important to consider the biblical narrative as to why there is suffering, since the assumption is 'There is a God'.

    Because i often feel that when atheists ask 'If God why suffering', the question is one that assumes there is a God, but expects an answer from an assumption that there is no God. It's like saying, explain to me where a lemon comes from but the answer cant be 'From a lemon tree', because i dont believe in such a thing as lemon trees, i believe in bushes.

    Is it then fair for an atheist to make the conclusions they make about God? Because they expect answers but those that fit in their framework and context instead of the framework and context of the actual question?

  34. @SIMMlc

    November 22, 2025 at 6:37 am

    I stopped somewhere in the middle of Phillips introduction (8:00) to see if anyone else in the comments already finds him annoying and all I see is ppl going after Elizabeth. If she's worse than him this is gonna be a really tough video to get through…

  36. @SimberLayek

    November 22, 2025 at 6:37 am

    You really do stand out, Alex… and I feel like this kinda stuff just barely scratches the surface…. I'm so glad I found your channel years ago and watched you grow into what you are now… Keep doing your best, and ALWAYS STAY HONEST!~<3

  40. @edannan1067

    November 22, 2025 at 6:37 am

    As a former archbishop of Canterbury, I don't feel like he is able to offer anything salient to the discussion and it just seems confirming that if they can't just tell you that God is love, or works in mysterious ways, or that you should just have faith, then they have nothing to say to the serious debate about what belief is.

  42. @IntellectusRising

    November 22, 2025 at 6:37 am

    None of them know the meaning of life, so why are they even debating! We are here in the universe to learn, make mistakes, grow our consciousness until we reach a level always close to perfection as there can never be perfection, otherwise we could never exist if we couldn't grow anymore. This means a very long time incarnating, Christians and Atheists both have it wrong!

  43. @thatchap

    November 22, 2025 at 6:37 am

    I stop at 15mins.
    Whether you are celebrated intellectuals or illiterate, discussing your interpretation based on the fact that
    – “You like the idea”
    is an endless merry-go-round of made up, life long amendments.
    Rather like backing a football team – for what ever reason.

    Many argue they are insulted by interpreting, no matter how cleaver you word it.

    I don’t wish to proscribe to this endless pursuit which too often starts all sanitary about stars & the universe & ends in tears.
    – See ya & good luck

  46. @dvduadotcom

    November 22, 2025 at 6:37 am

    Elizabeth came off to me as incredibly emotional, coming to tears at her own thoughts and words, it was so emotionally indulgent, and I love that she feels deeply, but she just seemed to wax on about poetry every time she spoke, which was a bit bizarre and not what I would call conducive to a debate

  48. @ChadDippyDora

    November 22, 2025 at 6:37 am

    I look forward to this sort of debate, then get so disappointed. The same old cycle of answerable questions. Malachites, fine tuning, bla bla.

    Alex is brilliant and can tie anyone in knots. But they are Gordian knots – slashed though with yet another distraction, red herring or outright absurdity.

    I had the strength to stop watching this one.

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