Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Oxford mathematician John Lennox on fine tuning in the universe

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Here’s a good ID site in Britain, exploring intelligent design in the universe (don’t let it cost you your job, of course):

God of the gaps?

John Lennox, Professor of Mathematics and Philosophy of Science at Green Templeton College, Oxford, has written much in support of the design arguments from fine tuning. He writes concerning these arguments: “We should note that the preceding arguments are not ‘God of the gaps’ arguments; it is advance in science, not ignorance of science, that has revealed this fine-tuning to us. In that sense there is no ‘gap’ in the science, The question is rather: how should we interpret the science? In what direction is it pointing?”

His conclusion is that science overwhelmingly provides evidence for a designer of the universe.

Note: But even if it does cost you your job, like what happened to Dave Coppedge – remember him? – would you rather live in an undesigned universe?

Comments
Well, all materialists seem to resemble some 'soap'- followers, who have attacked actors playing villains, seemingly unable to distinguish between flights of the imagination and reality. And the materialists would do a lot more harm in the real world, even in comparison with the 'soap'-cast villains in their assigned roles, never mind as victims of such assaults.Axel
March 29, 2012
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I think the Mirror's customary NASA correspondent must have been sick, and they sent their "Corrie" (latest on Coronation St and the other "soaps) columnist, to fill in. Well, the New York Times or the Guardian did send their golfing correspondent(sic) to a lecture by Einstein, presumably in German, as he was the only one on the staff who could speak German. Anyway, he must have put all those news hounds' minds to rest, as when he was asked what Einstein had said, he replied no doubt in reassuring tones, "Platitudes, my boy. Nothing but platitudes..!" I suspect the Mirror's sub-editor excised a prefatory phrase such as "Any road up, chook..."Axel
March 29, 2012
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"Proteins provide the raw material that allows all living things, from microbes to humans, to exist and function." I just love these "raw materials" arguments. Compare, "A glacier flowed over this mountain breaking it down into rocks, the raw materials for building the Taj Mahal, Michaelangelo's David and silicon chips."Jon Garvey
March 28, 2012
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Re: Axel's link:
"But just what caused life to spring out of nowhere on a barren and desolate planet billions of years ago remains a mystery. Now scientists may have part of the answer. Laboratory experiments have shown that amino acids - organic molecules that are the building blocks of proteins - would have survived violent comet impacts. What is more, the shock of a large comet impact would have provided the energy needed to start bonding amino acids together to make proteins. Proteins provide the raw material that allows all living things, from microbes to humans, to exist and function. Their creation by comets may explain how life appeared so quickly at the end of a period 3.8 billion years ago called the “late heavy bombardment”."
Yes, more titillating excitement about amino acids and peptide bonds. I suppose there's no hope of hearing about sequence specificity amidst all this excitement -- that in seeking an explanation for the existence of news papers, we have discovered some interesting chemical properties of ink.material.infantacy
March 28, 2012
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Not so fast! The Daily Mirror's NASA correspondent will put Professor Lennox right: http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/science/life-born-in-the-impact-of-old-comets-774214 ... 'course an asteroid hitting another asteroid is what made the comet.Axel
March 28, 2012
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"There is another important issue that arises from this story about Laplace. In any debate about science and religion, sooner or later the question of the ‘God of the gaps’ will be raised. This is the idea that the introduction of a god or God is an evidence of intellectual laziness: we cannot explain something scientifically and so we introduce ‘God’ to cover our ignorance. We shall have more to say about this later, but at this juncture it is important to point out that Mr. Ford is not to be found in the gaps in our knowledge about the workings of internal combustion engines. More precisely, he is not to be found in any reason-given explanations that concern mechanisms. For Henry Ford is not a mechanism: he is no less than the agent who is responsible for the existence of the mechanism in the first place so that it all bears the marks of his handiwork - and that means the bits we do understand and the bits we don’t.” “So it is with God. At the more abstract level of the explanatory power of science itself, philosopher Richard Swinburne in his book Is there a God? says: ‘Note that I am not postulating a ‘God of the gaps’, a god merely to explain the things that science has not yet explained. I am postulating a God to explain why science explains; I do not deny that science explains, but I postulate God to explain why science explains. The very success of science in showing is how deeply ordered the natural world is provides strong grounds for believing that there is an even deeper cause for that order.’ Swinburne is using inference to the best explanation and saying that God is the best explanation for the explanatory power of science." “The point to grasp here is that, because God is not an alternative to science as an explanation, he is not to be understood merely as a God of the gaps. On the contrary, he is the ground of all explanation: it is his existence which gives rise to the very possibility of explanation, scientific or otherwise. It is important to stress this because influential authors such as Richard Dawkins will insist on conceiving of God as an explanatory alternative to science -- an idea that is nowhere to be found in theological reflection of any depth. Dawkins is therefore tilting at a windmill -- dismissing a concept of God that no serious thinker believes in anyway. Such activity is not necessarily to be regarded as a mark of intellectual sophistication.” John Lennox, God's Undertaker, Kindle location 1023material.infantacy
March 28, 2012
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Dr Lennox is a brilliant man.Blue_Savannah
March 28, 2012
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