Can Science Explain Everything?John C. Lennox, Good Book, 2019Preface Explains that this is an introductory book meant to be more accessible than his "God's Undertaker", which was the first of his books that I read and which got me hooked on his books. Introduction: Cosmic Chemistry p9-10
p11 Describes his upbringing in the difficult times of Northern Ireland, which he labels "The Troubles". He appreciates the fact that his parents showed compassion in those times and encouraged him to think for himself, to read widely about a variety of worldviews. Notes his debates over 20years with leading atheists such as Richard Dawkins. Asserts a will to "treat people with different worldviews with respect, to find out how they arrived at their position, and why they feel so passionately about it." 1. Can you be a scientist and believe in God?
p14 Stephen Weinberg, Nobel Prize winner in the quarks and leptons area, is one who is hostile to faith. Lennox quotes him more extensively on p18 of Gunning for God. p14 "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."
p14 Lennox's response: "I hope you didn't miss the rather sinister-sounding totalitarian element in this statement: "anything we scientists can do ..." p14-15 Cites the aggressive "give up this childish faith in God" pressure he got as a young student at Cambridge. He decided to take the risk -- "a brilliant scientist trying to bully me into giving up Christianity" p16 "I resolved to do my best to be as good a scientist as I could and, if ever I had the opportunity, to encourage people to think about the big questions of God and science and make up their own minds without being bullied or pressured." p16
p18 As an example of a current professional scientist, he cited Sean Carroll "We humans are blobs of organized mud, which through the impersonal workings of nature's patterns have developed the capacity to contemplate and cherish and engage with the intimidating complexity of the world around us ...The meaning we find in life is not transcendent ..." "The Big Picture", Random House, 2016, p3-5. p18-19 After a paragraph of testimony in which he asserts that "it is atheism to which science gives little support", he launches into a wonderful story of his trip to Siberiea to lecture to a group of mathematicians. I'm not quoting the whole story, but it would be a powerful testimony as a quote.
p20 Cites C.S. Lewis: "Men became scientific because they expected Law in Nature, and they expected Law in Nature because they believed in a Legislator." Miracles, Simon & Schuster, 1996 p140. Further reflection on some of the great scientists who were Christian
p24 Lennox notes that his Siberia, Russia audience probably had a better feel for the dangers of challenging a powerful, almost totalitarian, scientific orthodoxy than we do. But he cites one of the most famous debates, Wilberforce and Huxley in 1860, to illustrate how far off track the discussion of faith and science can get. C. A. Russell "The common belief that ... the actual relations between religion and science over the last few centuries have been marked by deep and enduring hostility ... is not only historically inaccurate but actually a caricature so grotesque that what needs to be explained is how it could possibly have achieved any degree of respectability." 2. How did we get here: from Newton to Hawking. p25 How did we get from Newton's belief to Hawking's atheism? p25 Cites Sagan's arrogant "The cosmos is all there is, or ever was, or ever will be." p26 "Sagan's statement is simply an expression of his atheistic belief." And I would add, a profound expression of his arrogance to make such a sweeping statement without a shred of real scientific or other compelling evidence. p26 Feynman "outside his or her field, the scientist is just as dumb as the next guy" Lennox uses this as intro for one of the dumbest statements made by a brilliant man like Hawking - it has become quite famous in philosophical circles. In The Grand Design, Hawking and Mlodinow make the mind-boggling statement "philosophy is dead ... Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge". Lennox's reply is "I thought it rather unwise to say philosophy is dead at the beginning of a book whose main topic is the philosophy of science." I thought Lennox was quite restrained in this assessment of the Hawking death of philosophy statement. Most other reactions I have heard, including my own, have been much more extreme.
Science can't deal with "why" questions.
p28 "Nobel Prize Winner Sir Peter Medawar points out that the existence of a limit to science is very likely because of its inability to answer childlike elementary questions: 'I have in mind such questions as: "How did everything begin?" "What are we all here for?" "What is the point of living?"' p28-32 False objections to belief in God
p35 Rational Explanation. A given scientific explanation of something it not necessarily the only rational explanation that is possible. There can be multiple explanations that are equally true at the same time.
p37 "Stephen Hawking claimed that God is not necessary to explain why the universe exists in the first place - why there is something rather than nothing. He believed that science could supply the answer. He wrote:
p38 Paul Davies: "There's no need to invoke anything supernatural in the origins of the universe or of life. I have never liked the idea of divine tinkering: for me it is much more inspiring to believe that a set of mathematical laws can be so clever as to bring all these things into being." Quoted by Clive Cookson, "Scientists who glimpsed God", Financial Times, April 29, 1995, p50. This was disappointing to me - I have a very high regard for Paul Davies and he has written some very articulate descriptions of the conditions necessary for the universe and life. I have seen several authors suggest an intelligent cause outside of space and time, and that's what I would have expected from Davies based on the other material from him that I have read. I think Lennox appropriately criticizes the non-scientific language. I also consider Lennox to be the top voice in making the distinction between "law" and "agency" - a law can't do anything without an agent to initiate and enable the process. Lennox appropriately cites C.S.Lewis p39 on the nature and limitations of "laws of nature": p41 Allan Sandage, discoverer of quasars and winner of the Crafoord prize in astronomy. "I find it quite improbable that such order came out of chaos. There has to be some organizing principle. God to me is a mystery but is the explanation for the miracle of existence - why there is something instead of nothing." 3. Mythbusters I: Religion depends on faith but science doesn't p43 "I am often told that the trouble with believers in God is just that: they are believers. That is, they are people of faith. Science is far superior because it doesn't require faith. It sounds great. The problem is, it could not be more wrong." p43 Describes exchange with atheist Princeton ethicist Peter Singer. Seemed not to realize or acknowledge that his atheism was a faith. p44-45 Richard Dawkins "The God Delusion" proclaims his faith in his atheist philosophy of naturalism. But he classifies "faith" for God believers as "believing where you know there is no evidence" or "blind faith". But "the faith expected on the part of Christians is certainly not blind." Quotes John 20:30-31 about eye-witness experiences with Christ. "Indeed, a strong case can be made that much of the material in the Gospels is based on eyewitness testimony." p45 "Do atheists have faith? This confusion about the nature of faith leads many people to another serious error: thinking that neither atheism nor science requires faith. Yet, the irony is that atheism is a belief system and science cannot do without faith." p45-46 "Physicist Paul Davies says that the right scientific attitude is essentially theological: 'Science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview.' 'even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith a law-like order in nature that is at least in part comprehensible to us.' " Templeton Prize Address, 1995, goo.gl/bXag3s. p46 Albert Einstein: "science can only be created by those who hare thoroughly imbued with the aspiration towards truth and understanding. This source of feeling,however, springs from the sphere of religion. To this there also belongs the faith in the possibility that the regulations valid for the world of existence are rational, that is, comprehensible to reason. I cannot conceive a genuine man of science without that profound faith. The situation may be explained by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." (www.nature.com/articles/146605a0.pdf) p46 John Polkinghorne: "Science does not explain the mathematical intelligibility of the physical world, for it is part of science's founding faith that this is so.." (Reason and Reality, SPCK, 1991, p76) p47 A remarkable discussion of human reason following Polkinghorne's statement and including the classic statements of Einstein and Wigner about mathematics and reason. p47 "On what evidence, therefore, do scientists base their faith in the rational intelligibility of the universe, which allows them to do science? The first thing to notice is that human reason did not create the universe." "Not only did we not create the universe, we did not create our own powers of reason either. We can develop our rational faculties by use; but we did not originate them. How can it be, then, that what goes on in our tiny heads can give us anything near a true account of reality? How can it be that a mathematical equation thought up in the mind of a mathematician can correctly correspond to the workings of the universe?" p47-51 Mathematics and human reason
p53 "The flip side of the common objection addressed in the last chapter is that science depends on reason, and belief in God does not. This notion is as widespread and as completely wrong as the topic of the previous chapter." p53-54 The difficulty of defining science. Back to Aristotle almost 2500 years ago. Contrast to Plato who had much less of an experimental bent. Galileo corrected Aristotle's mistake about a heavy ball hitting the ground faster from given height. You just have to engage reason and do experiments. p55 Lots of discussion about the "scientific method", but a big part of it is common-sense rational thinking. The Bible is full of this kind of thinking. Greatest commandment? Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength. "Mind" is prominently included. p56 Job 38 questions from God to get Job to use his mind. p57 The controlled studies of Daniel and his friends. p59 Ark of the Covenant experiment with two cows. p60 Much of todays formality of science forbids the supernatural dimension, and methodological naturalism works for believer and non-believer in a modern lab. But if you "follow the evidence where it leads", the mantra of long-time atheist Anthony Flew, you might find as he did that the information in DNA and the almost unbelievable complexity of life suggests the involvement of intelligence. p61 Lennox quotes the dramatic passage from Lewontin, which climaxes with "we cannot allow a divine foot in the door." p62-63 Lennox makes the point that Jesus' teachings had abundant examples of common-sense reasoning. 5. Can we really take the Bible seriously in a scientifically literate world? p65-70 Discussion of age of Earth and Big Bang and an overview of "God's two books". Leads to a discussion of Copernicus and the Galileo story.Discusses metaphors in the Bible p71 Discussion of Big Bang, Hoyle and Lemaitre and the expanding universe. Touches age of the universe and the variety of views and urges us to become better readers of "both books." 6. Miracles: a step too far? p76 Quotes Richard Dawkins, who does present the dilemma of miracles in a straightforward way: Lennox notes that this echoes David Hume on the line "miracles are violations of the laws of nature". Dawkins states the dilemma well. Lennox follows with a list of outstanding scientists who are Christians. He quotes one of those, Francis Collins, to round out the nature of the dilemma of miracles. p77 Francis Collins: "It is crucial that a healthy skepticism 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 possiblility 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." (The Language of God, Simon & Schuster, UK 2007, p51-51) p77 Discusses laws of nature as predictive of future behavior with great accuracy. Many scientists then see the universe as a closed system of cause and effect with no room for miracles. p p p p p p p p 7. Can you trust what you read? p p p p p 8. How to disprove Christianity p p p p p p p 9. The personal dimension p103 The first Christians saw Jesus personally, but most of us have become Christians without literally seeing him. Jesus's words to Thomas:
p103 We believe in many things which we have not seen.
p107-111 We do have to deal with understanding ourselves and our sins, realizing that we must come in repentance to Christ for forgiveness and redemption. p111-117 A remarkable story of the extraordinary series of circumstances that brought him into the same railway compartment with two French-speaking attorneys. His facility with language and openness to sharing the gospel led to a deep conversation about the Christian faith. A key part of the message he is sharing with his readers is that God may have orchestrated a scenario in which I could use it to share the gospel. p117-120 He proceeds with the nature of the path to Christ and the steps of repentance and faith that bring us to a relationship with Christ. 10.Entering the labortory: Testing the truth of Christianity
p122 A shout from the gallery - a story of a Chinese student whose life was transformed by coming to Christ. p124 Brief recap of his testimony. Appeal to investigate from a distance, but then draw close to God. Assertion that science and Christianity mix. Quotes Colossians 1:15-50.
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