
Oxford mathematician John Lennox explains:
… naturalism, and therefore atheism, undermines the foundations of the very rationality that is needed to construct or understand or believe in any kind of argument whatsoever, let alone a scientific one. In short, it leads to the abolition of reason — a kind of “abolition of man,” since reason is an essential part of what it means to be human.
Not surprisingly, I reject atheism because I believe Christianity to be true. But that is not my only reason. I also reject it because I am a mathematician interested in science and rational thought. How could I espouse a worldview that arguably abolishes the very rationality I need to do mathematics? By contrast, the biblical worldview that traces the origin of human rationality to the fact that we are created in the image of a rational God makes real sense as an explanation of why we can do science.
John Lennox, “Why Science and atheism don’t mix” at Evolution News and Science Today
It’s an excerpt from his new book, 2084: : Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanity (2020).
I find this rather disappointing. I expected more from Lennox than the standard trite apologetics.
But all we are offered is the standard trope that atheism somehow undermines rationality without explaining exactly why. We observe that we exist in an ordered universe. We would not exist to observe anything at all if it were not so. Our reason is grounded in that order and our need to understand and explain it. If anything, it is a capricious deity, capable of breaking the laws of nature whenever the mood took it, who would make the scientific enterprise impossible.
As for imago dei it sounds good but I have yet to see a plausible explanation of what it actually means.
Seversky claims that,
Either Seversky has an extremely short memory span, or else he is flat out lying.
Over the past several years, perhaps a decade by now, Seversky has been shown the following references several times
Moreover, throwing natural selection into the ‘naturalistic’ equation does not help atheists in their attempt to explain our ability to reason. As Nancy Pearcey stated, “Francis Crick (an atheist) writes, “Our highly developed brains, after all, were not evolved under the pressure of discovering scientific truths but only to enable us to be clever enough to survive.” But that means Crick’s own theory is not a “scientific truth.” Applied to itself, the theory commits suicide”,,,
In fact, “(natural selection) could have developed at least four different kinds of belief that are compatible with evolutionary naturalism, none of which necessarily produce true and trustworthy cognitive faculties. ”
Of course, one of the main reasons that naturalism undermines reason and rationality is because naturalism denies the reality of the immaterial mind and therefore denies the reality of free will.
As Martin Cothran noted, “The claim that free will is an illusion requires the possibility that minds have the freedom to assent to a logical argument, a freedom denied by the claim itself. It is an assent that must, in order to remain logical and not physiological, presume a perspective outside the physical order.”
In fact, (like the immaterial mind), logic itself, (which forms the basis of all reason and rationality), is immaterial in and of itself, and therefore logic itself can never be grounded within naturalism and/or Darwinian materialism. Yet Christianity readily accounts for the existence of logic
Of course, Seversky, as usual, will refuse to acknowledge any of this and promptly forget that atheism undermines rationality.
Anthropomorphic principles a double edge sword of course the universe had to be ordered for us to observe it, But for us to acknowledge any other universe other than the one that we have is also equally impossible
I could only ever know this universe and that’s why I don’t put any stock in the anthropomorphic printable
It’s like somebody only sees the color gray imagining the color blue, that just can’t happen, when all anyone has ever know is gray
We have done just that by envisioning other universes that could exist
By the way we can easily live in a D&D universe in tiny little bubbles
Now the fact that science even works and that there is an inherent order to the universe lends credence to a God of logic and order, And our universe doesn’t have to be ordered and follow laws
By that logic it is a God that cares
Sure you can pick it apart and imagine a version of God that’s cruel and delicious but it’s all law and order
“We observe that we exist in an ordered universe. We would not exist to observe anything at all if it were not so. Our reason is grounded in that order…”
That’s the correct conclusion but drawn from the wrong premise. The premise “we would not exist to observe anything at all IF it were not so” is just glossing over random chance. IT just happens to be that way, if it happened another way we wouldn’t be here. So at the bottom of an atheists reasoning is blind chance. It is absurd to ultimately ground order in disorder. Which is why a leap is made over chance to the correct conclusion of “reason is grounded in order”.
That the order in nature is rooted in another order outside nature makes sense. Aka theism.
That the order in nature is rooted in the reasonless absurdity of blind chance is nonsense. Aka atheism.
“If anything, it is a capricious deity, capable of breaking the laws of nature whenever the mood took it, who would make the scientific enterprise impossible.”
If you replace capricious deity with the infinite chaos asserted by atheists you are spot on. It’s as if you understand order comes from order and chaos is a bad agent to base science on but mischaracterize God to avoid that conclusion. God is unchanging. Therefore a capricious deity is just a strawman.
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This is entirely true, but it is only part of the truth. We would not exist to observe anything at all if there was not also an control hierarchy physically embedded in biological systems that enables them to specify themselves among alternatives. This is fundamental to the self-reference required of biology, and self-reference cannot occur without it.
This is your problem Seversky, and it has been your problem for years on end. When confronted with the undeniable facts and history of the matter, you simply run head-long away from it. You repeatedly and deliberately hide behind the mere assumption of your conclusions. Against a concrete wall of documented facts and history, you simply buckle down and refuse it all – and your very worst showing comes in those very few times you’ve tip-toed into addressing those facts. In those instances, your comments can be immediately replaced with “The documented facts are wrong and I am right” without the even slightest loss of context or detail. And what is even worse, is that you imagine yourself to be a classical liberal — while you incessantly do the bidding for those who are more than happy to deprive intellectual freedom from any person who disagrees with the indefensible assumptions you make. Your first comment here was in December 2008, so you now have almost 12 years, here alone, doing just exactly that.
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Here is a comment you made on these pages, all those eleven and a half years ago, when you first came here:
That comment is as completely and utterly indefensible today as it was on the day you made it. By that I mean; by way of logic, history, and vast documentation within the scientific literature, that comment can be beaten down into the dirt and squashed of having any merit whatsoever. Don’t believe me? Just try to defend that comment WITHOUT assuming your conclusions as a means of escaping the evidence to the contrary. Yet, here you still are, saying the same things. And apparently, in another dozen years, you’ll still be saying the same things all over again.
They say that a authoritarian only gets his power by the submission of the commoner. You have certainly done your part, Seversky – you brave liberal you.
Seversky
I find it hard to believe that an educated person does not know that there is vast patristic literature on the subject dating back to the first generation of Christian apologetics and the immediate successors to the Apostles of Christ the Saviour, such as St Polycarp of Smyrna and St Justin the Martyr through to the Ecumenical teachers of the 4th century AD – Sts John Chrysostom, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa, the desert fathers of the onset of Christian monasticism St Antony and Macarios the Great, through St John of Damascus (8th century), to the wealth of Byzantine theological thought, St Simeon the New Theologian, St Gregory of Thessalonika, up to more recent holy fathers such as St Seraphim of Sarov, St Theophan the Recluse, St Nectarios of Aegina and the New Martyrs of Russia.
All of them spoke in one accord and some of them even laid their lives to testify to the truth of what they had taught on the very subject, you say, is lacking a plausible explanation of what it actually means.
EugeneS @ 6
I am aware of it. Are you aware that the very existence of such a large body of literature is itself evidence of the problematical nature of the concept?
That is evidence of the sincerity of their beliefs, not whether those beliefs have any basis in reality.