BOOK REVIEW – God’s Undertaker, Part 2

“Salvator Mundi” (Latin: Savior of the World) by Leonardo da Vinci (c. 1500) (PD-Art l Old-100)

This is Part 2 of a review of the book God’s Undertaker – Has Science Buried God? by John Lennox.  The rational intelligibility of the universe, and its fine-tuning were discussed last week in Part 1.

In Favor of a Creator (Continued)

C.  Limitations of Evolution

“…the Darwinian theory is correct in the small, but not in the large.  Rabbits come from other slightly different rabbits, not from either [primeval] soup or potatoes.”

-Fred Hoyle

John Lennox willingly concedes microevolution (variation within already existing species, body plans, and structures), but distinguishes it from macroevolution (the introduction of qualitatively new genetic material, as reflected in new species, body plans, or structures).

Natural selection simply cannot account for the extent of genetic variation.  Indeed, paleontologists admit that evidence for macroevolution is sadly lacking from the fossil record – something not much publicized.

Lennox points out that the time frame required for the evolution of complex structures like the human eye by random chance is far in excess of scientifically recognized estimates for the age of the entire universe.

In an attempt to explain away this deficiency, some atheists have sought to modify the theory of evolution.  They now contend that evolution is not an undirected process.  Rather, it is said to seek out the “best” outcome, and proceed in that direction by a faster pathway.

This runs counter to the original concept of natural selection, and is wholly unsupported by scientific evidence.

John Lennox, also, examines so called molecular evolution (the claim that living cells emerged from non-living material, across the vast chasm that separates the two).   Molecular evolution provides no explanation for the origin of information which is not, itself, material.  Moreover, the statistics against it are staggeringly large.  No amount of typing monkeys will suffice.

Purpose

“You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behavior of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.”

-Francis Crick

“If Crick’s thesis is true we could never know it.  For not only does it relegate our experience of beauty, moral obligation, and religious encounter to the ephiphenomenal scrap-heap.  It also destroys rationality…The very assertions of the reductionist himself are nothing but blips in the neural network of his brain.”

– John Polkinghorne

Reductionism reduces the order in the universe to meaninglessness.  By contrast, a belief in God makes sense of the rational intelligibility of the universe.

Lennox views the wonder of the universe “as a whole” as further evidence for the existence of a Creator.  He points out that Kurt Godel proved mathematically that the whole can be greater than the sum of its parts.

Conclusion

“Evolution by natural selection…has come to function as an anti-theory called upon to cover up embarrassing experimental shortcomings and legitimize findings that are at best questionable and at worst even wrong.”

-Robert Laughlin

“It is one thing to suggest that science cannot answer questions of ultimate purpose.  It is quite another to dismiss purpose itself as an illusion because science cannot deal with it.”

-John Lennox

The most vehement atheists contend not only that science has made God irrelevant; and evolution, proven human existence without purpose.  They maintain that God is an evil; that religion stultifies the human intellect.

This speaks to motives unrelated to science.

Some scientists have been led to redeify the universe, endowing matter and energy with creative capacities beyond any they possess, and confusing laws with the evidence for their existence.

John Lennox clarifies this for readers.  That a law of nature can be described mathematically does not imply it is self-executing.  And that we understand mechanism does not imply we understand agency.

Lennox uses the metaphor of a Ford vehicle to demonstrate this.  We may understand every aspect of the vehicle, may be able to describe the function of every knob and screw down to the atomic level.

That does not disprove the existence of Henry Ford.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made” (John 1: 1, 3).

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