God's Undertaker

C Lennox John

Description

Evaluates the evidence of modern science in relation to the debate between the atheistic and theistic interpretations of the universe, and provides a fresh basis for discussion. The book has grown out of the author's lengthy experience of lecturing and debating on this subject in the UK, USA, Germany and Russia, and has been written in response to endless requests for the argumentation in written form. Chapters: War of the worldviews The scope and limits of science Gods, gaps and goblins Designer universe Designer biosphere The nature and scope of evolution The origin of life The genetic code and its origin Matters of information Taming chance without intelligence The origin of information

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• History of science

Informations

• Publié par: Lion Hudson
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780745959283
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

GOD’S JOHN C. LENNOX

UNDERTAKER NEW UPDATED EDITION GOD’S UNDERTAKER HAS SCIENCE BURIED GOD ? There is no more important debate than this – science versus religion. But it needs to begin again, with clear understanding of what science and religion actually are. Lennox has done this wonderfully. Colin Tudge, The Guardian An excoriating demolition of Dawkins’s overreach from biology into religion.

Melanie Phillips, The Spectator

GOD’S UNDERTAKER

‘A brilliantly argued reevaluation of the relation of science and religion, casting welcome new light on today’s major debates. A mustread for all reflecting on the greatest questions of life.’

Alister E. McGrath MA DPhil DD , Professor of Theology, Ministry and Education, King’s College, London

‘This short book is more than just a critical analysis of the deep question posed in the title. It is a scientific detective story, which keeps the reader on his toes as the evidence is put in place bit by bit. John Lennox reaches his final conclusion in grand Hercule Poirot style, revealing the answer that he sees as the only possible solution to the pieces of evidence he has amassed along the way. If you begin this book thinking the answer to the question in the title is “No”, you will enjoy this masterful collecting of the evidence. If you begin it thinking it is “Yes”, maybe you won’t in the end be persuaded to change your view, but you will certainly be faced with a lot of challenging and thought provoking ideas that will certainly tax your powers of reasoning. Whatever your final conclusion, it is impossible not to find this a stimulating read.’

Keith Frayn , PhD ScD FRCPath , Professor of Human Metabolism, University of Oxford

‘As an agnostic in the true sense of the word as “not knowing”, I found John Lennox’s book intriguing and providing much food for thought. The relationship between science, both biological and cosmological, and Christian beliefs is closely examined and evidence carefully marshalled to dispel the idea that the two approaches are incompatible. The author is a committed Christian and an internationally recognized mathematician. Will the reader be convinced by his arguments? I must leave this to others to judge. But whatever the conclusion, one must agree that this is a wellwritten and thoughtprovoking book and will contribute to reasoned discussion on a fundamental question: “Has Science Buried God?” ‘

Alan Emery , MD PhD DSc FRCP FRCPE FRSE FRSA , Emeritus Professor of Human Genetics, University of Edinburgh

‘God’s Undertaker: Has Science buried God?by John Lennox is an important and topical contribution to the debate and questions about the origin of the universe and its physical laws, the origin of complex biological design and the purpose (if any) of mankind. There are some (both religious and materialists) who would like to give the impression that we have answers to these most fundamental questions, and, most disturbingly, even attempt to stifle and censor debate. However, it is my opinion that rather than inhibit further discussion we should encourage further intelligent debate about mankind’s origins and that is why I believe it is essential that manuscripts such asGod’s Undertakerbe published and made available to the public so that they can judge for themselves.’

Chris Paraskeva , BSc DPhil , Professor of Experimental Oncology, University of Bristol

GOD’S UNDERTAKER HAS SCIENCE BURIED GOD ? John C. Lennox

Copyright © 2009 John C. Lennox

The author asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A Lion Book an imprint of Lion Hudson plc Wilkinson House, Jordan Hill Road, Oxford OX2 8DR, England www.lionhudson.com UK ISBN 978 0 7459 5371 7 US ISBN 978 0 8254 7912 0

First edition 2007 This edition 2009 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

All rights reserved

Acknowledgments

pp. 16, 30, 49, 51, 174, 177, 182, 183, 208 Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan and Hodder & Stoughton Limited. All rights reserved. The ‘NIV’ and ‘New International Version’ trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by International Bible Society. Use of either trademark requires the permission of International Bible Society. UK trademark number 1448790.

This book originated in lectures given at a course entitledFaith, Reason and Scienceat the University of Oxford, Department for Continuing Education and at the Institute for the Philosophy of Science at Salzburg University, Austria. It represents an attempt to evaluate the evidence of modern science in relation to the debate between the atheistic and theistic interpretations of the universe and to provide a basis for discussion.

The text paper used in this book has been made from wood independently certified as having come from sustainable forests.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Distributed by: UK: Marston Book Services Ltd, PO Box 269, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4YN USA: Trafalgar Square Publishing, 814 N Franklin Street, Chicago, IL 60610 USA Christian Market: Kregel Publications, PO Box 2607, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49501

Typeset in 10/12.5 ITC Garamond BT Printed and bound in Malta by Gutenberg Press

Contents

Preface 7

1. War of the worldviews 15

2. The scope and limits of science 31

3. Reduction, reduction, reduction… 47

4. Designer universe? 58

5. Designer biosphere? 78

6. The nature and scope of evolution 100

7. The origin of life 122

8. The genetic code and its origin 135

9. Matters of information 148

10. The monkey machine 163

11. The origin of information 174

12. Violating nature? The legacy of David Hume 193

Epilogue 207

References 211

Index 222

To Sally without whose love, encouragement and support this book – and much else – would never have been completed.

Preface

‘What is the meaning of it all?’

R i c h a r d F e y n m a n

Why is there something rather than nothing? Why, in particular, does the universe exist? Where did it come from and where, if anywhere, is it heading? Is it itself the ultimate reality behind which there is nothing or is there something ‘beyond’ it? Can we ask with Richard Feynman: ‘What is the meaning of it all?’ Or was Bertrand Russell right when he said that ‘The universe is just there, and that’s all’? These questions have lost nothing of their power to fire human imagination. Spurred on by the desire to climb Everest peaks of knowledge, scientists have already given us spectacular insights into the nature of the universe we inhabit. On the scale of the unimaginably large, the Hubble telescope transmits stunning images of the heavens from its orbit high above the atmosphere. On the scale of the unimaginably small, the scanning tunnelling microscope uncovers the incredibly complex molecular biology of the living world with its informationrich macromolecules and its micro miniature protein factories whose complexity and precision make even advanced human technologies look crude by comparison. Are we and the universe with its profusion of galactic beauty and subtle biological complexity nothing but the products of irrational forces acting on mindless matter and energy in an unguided way, as the socalled New Atheists, led by Richard Dawkins, suggest? Is human life ultimately only one, admittedly improbable, but nevertheless fortuitous, arrangement of atoms among many? In any case, how could we be in any sense special since we now know that we inhabit a tiny planet orbiting a fairly undistinguished star far out in an arm of a spiral galaxy containing billions of similar stars, a galaxy that is only one of billions distributed throughout the vastness of space? What is more, say some, since certain basic properties of our universe, like the strength of the fundamental forces of nature and the number of

8

God’s Undertaker

observable space and time dimensions, are the result of random effects operating at the origin of the universe, then, surely, there could well be other universes with very different structures. May it not be that our universe is only one in a vast array of parallel universes forever separated from each other? Is it not therefore absurd to suggest that human beings have any ultimate significance? Their measure in a multiverse would seem effectively reduced to zero. Thus it surely would be an intellectually stultifying exercise in nostalgia to hark back to the early days of modern science when scientists such as Bacon, Galileo, Kepler, Newton and Clerk Maxwell, for example, believed in an intelligent Creator God whose brainchild the cosmos was. Science has moved on from such primitive thinking, we are told, squeezed God into a corner, killed and then buried him by its allembracing explanations. God has turned out to be no more substantial than the smile on a cosmic Cheshire cat. Unlike Schrödinger’s cat, God is no ghostly superposition of dead and alive – he is certainly dead. Furthermore, the whole process of his demise shows that any attempt to reintroduce God is likely to impede the progress of science. We can now see more clearly than ever before that naturalism – the view that nature is all that there is, that there is no transcendence – reigns supreme. Peter Atkins, Professor of Chemistry at Oxford University, while acknowledging the religious element in the history of the genesis of science, defends this view with characteristic vigour: ‘Science, the system of belief founded securely on publicly shared reproducible knowledge, emerged from religion. As science discarded its chrysalis to become its present butterfly, it took over the heath. There is no reason to suppose that science cannot deal with every aspect of existence. Only the religious – among whom I include not only the prejudiced but the underinformed – hope there is a dark corner of the physical universe, or of the universe of experience, that science can never hope to illuminate. But science has never encountered a barrier, and the only grounds for supposing that reductionism will fail are pessimism on the part of scientists and fear in the 1 minds of the religious.’ A conference at the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences in La Jolla, California in 2006 discussed the theme: ‘Beyond belief: science, religion, reason and survival.’ Addressing the question whether science should do away with religion, Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg 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 civilization.’ Unsurprisingly, Richard Dawkins went even further. ‘I am utterly fed up with the respect we have been brainwashed into bestowing upon religion.’

Preface

9

And yet, and yet… Is this really true? Are all religious people to be written off as prejudiced and underinformed? After all, some of them are scientists who have won the Nobel Prize. Are they really pinning their hopes on finding a dark corner of the universe that science can never hope to illuminate? Certainly that is scarcely a fair or true description of most of the early pioneers in science who, like Kepler, claimed that it was precisely their conviction that there was a Creator that inspired their science to ever greater heights. For them it was the dark corners of the universe that sciencedidilluminate that provided ample evidence of the ingenuity of God. And what of the biosphere? Is its intricate complexity really only apparentlyas Richard Dawkins, Peter Atkins’ staunch ally in designed, faith, believes? Can rationality really arise through unguided natural processes working under the constraints of nature’s laws on the basic materials of the universe in some random way? Is the solution of the mind body problem simply that rational mind ‘emerged’ from mindless body by undirected mindless processes? Questions about the status of this naturalistic story do not readily go away, as the level of public interest shows. So, is naturalism actually demanded by science? Or is it just conceivable that naturalism is a philosophy that is brought to science, more than something that is entailed by science? Could it even be, dare one ask, more like an expression of faith, akin to religious faith? One might at least be forgiven for thinking that from the way in which those who dare ask such questions are sometimes treated. Like religious heretics of a former age they may suffer a form of martyrdom by the cutting off of their grants. Aristotle is reputed to have said that in order to succeed we must ask the right questions. There are, however, certain questions that it is risky to ask – and even more risky to attempt to answer. Yet surely taking that kind of risk is in both the spirit and interests of science. From a historical perspective this is not a controversial point in itself. In the Middle Ages, for instance, science had to free itself from certain aspects of Aristotelian philosophy before it could get up a real head of steam. Aristotle had taught that from the moon and beyond all was perfection and, since perfect motion, in his view, had to be circular, the planets and stars moved in perfect circles. Beneath the moon motion was linear and there was imperfection. This view dominated thought for centuries. Then Galileo looked through his telescope and saw the ragged edges of lunar craters. The universe had spoken and part of Aristotle’s deduction from hisa priori concept of perfection lay in tatters. But Galileo was still obsessed with Aristotle’s circles: ‘For the maintenance of perfect order among the parts of the Universe, it is necessary to say that