In “Not the God of the Gaps, But the Whole Show” (Christian Post, August 20, 2012), Oxford mathematician John Lennox comments, “Scientists are wrong to call the Higgs boson ‘more relevant than God’”. He is referring to Larry Krauss’s claim,
Humans, with their remarkable tools and their remarkable brains, may have just taken a giant step toward replacing metaphysical speculation with empirically verifiable knowledge. The Higgs particle is now arguably more relevant than God.”
And Lennox replies,
What does Krauss mean by “more relevant than God?” Relevant to what? Clearly the Higgs particle is more relevant than God to the question of how the universe works. But not to the question why there is a universe in which particle physics can be done. The internal combustion engine is arguably more relevant than Henry Ford to the question of how a car works, but not for why it exists in the first place. Confusing mechanism and/or law on the one hand and agency on the other, as Krauss does here, is a category mistake easily made by ignoring metaphysics.
Krauss does not seem to realize that his concept of God is one that no intelligent monotheist would accept. His “God” is the soft-target “God of the gaps” of the “I can’t understand it, therefore God did it” variety. As a result, Krauss, like Dawkins and Hawking, regards God as an explanation in competition with scientific explanation. That is as wrong-headed as thinking that an explanation of a Ford car in terms of Henry Ford as inventor and designer competes with an explanation in terms of mechanism and law. God is not a “God of the gaps”, he is God of the whole show. More.
Excellent article, Lennox at his best once again!
of note:
sorry, the radio podcast link of John Lennox has been removed, so here is a recent video interview:
Questions and Answers with Professor John Lennox – video (april 2012)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tr7dCphnkw
It is also very strange that Krauss seems to think that ‘the universe can come into being from nothing’ as an argument against the Divine Origin, when it has the same meaning as the notion of creation ex nihilo
Weird how extraordinarily ‘woolly’ the thinking of these people, surely with a tertiary education, is; and yet they publicise what they take to be their satirical excogitations proudly at one of the few places where it is guaranteed they will be disabused of their crass notions, and duly humiliated. How did they ever graduate?
jeeprs, that indisposition to adhere to logic, whether in relation to their own thoughts or those of others, simply renders them wholly inapt to think discursively.
We can see that to be true ‘in spades’, in the case of Dawkins. Now he has painted himself into a corner with has thoughtless, sloganeering waffle, and fears exposing it to the public so much that he is forced to turn down invitations to argue his case against distinguished philosophers, and other able opponents.
Really bizarre. In even a half sane-world, this blog would be risibly redundant.