Cosmic Chemistry

John C. Lennox, Lion Books, 2021

Preface

Names this book the same as his opening section of his 2019 book "Can Science Explain Everything?", which in turn he compared to "God's Undertaker" which was the first of his books that I read and which got me hooked on his books. I am reproducing the "two sides" he proposed in "Can Science Explain Everything?"

Science side
- Science is an unstoppable force for human development that will deliver answers to our many questions about the universe, and solve many, if not all, of our human problems: disease, energy, pollution, poverty. At some stage in the future, science will be able to explain everything, and answer all our needs.
God side
- A divine intelligence is behind everything there is and everything we are. We look to the complexity and wonder of the universe and our astonishingly rich and diverse blue planet, and find it self-evident that there is a wonderful mind behind our beautiful and amazing world.

Part 1: Surveying the Landscape

1. Introduction

The introduction is a good source of quotes:

p10 Those who have stated the "big questions" for humans to ponder:
- "Why is there something rather than nothing?" Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Martin Heidegger
- What is the meaning of it all? Richard Feynman
- 'To know the answer to the question "What is the meaning of life?" means to be religious.' Albert Einstein
- "To believe in God means to see that life has a meaning." Ludwig Wittgenstein
Statements from the aggressive atheists:
- Bertrand Russell: "The universe is just there, and that's all. No purpose, no meaning, just the brute fact of existence."
- Peter Atkins
  "Science, the system of belief founded securely on publicly shared reproducible knowledge, emerged from religion. As science discarded its chrysalis to become its present butterfly, it took over the heath. There is no reason to suppose that science cannot deal with every aspect of existence. Only the religious - among whom I include not only the prejudiced but the uninformed - hope there is a dark corner of the physical universe, or of the universe of experience, that science can never hope to illuminate. But science has never encountered a barrier, and the only grounds for supposing that reductionism will fail are pessimism on the part of scientists and fear in the minds of the religious."
- Steven Weinberg
  "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."
- Richard Dawkins "I am utterly fed up with the respect we have been brainwashed into bestowing upon religion."
Early scientists who were theists and found in their faith the impetus to explore the nature of the universe.
- Bacon
- Galileo
- Kepler
- Newton
- Clerk Maxwell

p12

Central concern of the book, the worldview question: "Which worldview sits most comfortably with science - theism or atheism? God is understood as the Judaeo-Christian God and the focus is on the scientific aspects of the underlying question.
- Question A. Does science - its history, presuppositions, and findings - provide evidence of a designing intelligence involved in the universe and life?
- Question B. What is the nature of that designing intelligence, if it exists?
- Lennox affirms that it is Question A that is the main focus.

2. Matters of Evidence and Faith

p19 "..we point out the important principle that statements by scientists are not always statement of science."

Peter Atkins:

"Humanity should accept that science has eliminated the justification for believing in cosmic purpose, and that any survival of purpose is inspired only by sentiment."

Richard Dawkins:

"It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, 'mad cow' disease and many others., but I think that a case can be made that faith is one of the world's great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate. Faith, being belief that isn't based on evidence, is the principal vice of any religion."

p20 Lennox continues to hammer on Dawkins' willingness to assert that faith has no evidence without even attempting to show that it has no evidence. Dawkins' "scientific belief is based upon publicly checkable evidence, religious faith not only lacks evidence; its independence from evidence is its joy, shouted from the rooftops."

p21 Lennox quotes Romans 1:20 For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities-his eternal power and divine nature-have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
"It is no part of the biblical view that things should be believed where there is no evidence. Just as in science, faith, reason, and evidence belong together. Dawkins' definition of faith as what most of us understand as 'blind faith' turns out, therefore, to be the exact opposite of the biblical one. Curious that he does not seem to be aware of the discrepancy. Could it be as a consequence of blind faith of his own? For, Dawkins' idiosyncratic definition of faith provides a striking example of the very thing he claims to abhor - thinking that is not evidence-based. In an exhibition of breath-taking inconsistency, evidence is the very thing he fails to supply for his claim that independence of evidence is faith's joy."

p22 Lennox quotes approvingly one statement in Dawkins' "The Devil's Chaplain": "Next time that somebody tells you something is true, why not say to them: 'What kind of evidence is there for that?' And if they can't give you a good answer, I hope you'll think very carefully before you believe a word they say." But then he uses it to hammer him again with: "One might be forgiven for giving in to the powerful temptation to apply Dawkins' maxim to him- and just not believe anything he says."

p22 Cites Alvin Plantinga from "Where the Conflict Really Lies" pg xi: "the new atheists are but a temporary blemish on the face of serious conversation in this crucial area."

p23 Survey of scientists belief in God, sent to 1000 in 1910 with 70% reply
Belief in God?
          Yes     No     Agnostic
1910 41.8% 41.5% 16.7%
1996 39.6% 45.5% 14.9%
Top scientists in National Academy of Sciences
1998 7%     72%      20.8%
Fellows of Royal Society Strong liklihood of supernatural being
2018 8%      78%

Response to "I believe that science and religion occupy non-overlapping domains of discourse and can peacefully coexist (NOMA)"
Majority of these mainly atheist scientists see tensions but do not see religion as in overt conflict with science.

Sociologist Elaine Howard Ecklund, Rice University survey: 50% of evangelicals believe science and religion can work together. But for general population of U.S. only 38% belived so.

p25 Returns to his statement p19 "..we point out the important principle that statements by scientists are not always statement of science." and then suggests "it could be worth exploring what exactly the relationships between science and atheism and between science and theism are. In particular, which, if any, of these diametrically opposing worldviews of theism and atheism does science support?"

3. A Historical Perspective: The Forgotten Roots of Science and Arguments from Design

p26 Starts with the Paley Watchmaker quote.

p27 Note the monotheism of Melvin Calvin (Nobel prize, Calvin Cycle) like the quotes of Psalm 19:1 and Psalm 94:9 which points to the one God who formed life. Counters the popular conception that the ancient Greeks set aside polytheism to pave the way for the scientific revolution. The Hebrews' monotheism was much earlier.

p28-29 Discusses "argument to design" in which we expect a creating God to show design and find it, and "argument from design" in which we find design in creation an infer a Creator. Cites the teleological argument from Del Ratzsch.

p30-31 Interesting discussion about Hebrews far preceding Greeks in rejecting polytheism - so it was not the Greeks who aided science's agenda. The Greeks got so messed up in polytheism that they eventually emerged on one of two trajectories - Xenophanes (and the Hebrews) believed in one creator God, and the other branch was atheist and materialist. Tempting to do graphic, and tempting to do concept map of all these philosophers to help me keep track. p30-36 would be a good place to start with it.

Leucippus and his better known student Democritus founded the atomic theory.

p32 Feynman quote about the importance of the atomic hypothesis.

p32-36 Material I need to clarify my picture of Aristotle and his four ways and Aquinas and his five ways. Plutarch's view of chance on p34. Also discussion of Maimonides, whose statue we viewed while walking on the street in Cordoba, Spain after viewing the massive mosque structure with imbedded Christian cathedral. P36 quote Aquinas and Ward. The 5th way of Aquinas is the teleological argument. Note the difference from Aristotle.

p36-37 Lots of thinkers on p36-37 and useful list of theist scientists to use for the earlier list.

p38 Dawkins and Chinese picture.

p38 "We are by no means claiming that all aspects of religion in general and Christianity in particular have contributed to the rise of science.What we are suggesting is that the biblical doctrine of a unique Creator God, who is responsible for the existence of and order in the universe, has played an important role in the history of science."

p39 Whitehead and Torrance on the examples of hindering science by religious ideas. Brooke and Harrison contribute to the discussion.

Newtonian Mechanics and Determinism

p40 Some critique of Aristotle for trying to derive from philosophical principles how the universe ought to be. There had to be a departure from such an approach to the idea of a contingent universe. Examples were Galileo and Kepler who "went and looked".

p41 Isaac Newton had a strong theistic worldview, but the laws of mechanics which he discovered contributed to an atheist-materialist worldview. Cites quantum physicist Henry Stapp. Interesting idea that if Newtonian deterministic mechanics prevails where everything is determined by the initial conditions and the deterministic laws, this destroys the basis for human moral responsibility.

Of course the quantum view must enter here, but Lennox defers detailed discussion of this until Ch 21

Part 2: Science and Explanation

4. Science, its Presuppositions, Scope, and Methodology

5. Worldviews and Their Relation to Science: Naturalism and its Shortcomings

6. Theism and its Relationship to Science: God of Gaps, Complexity of God, and Miracles

p114 Dawkins' complexity of God objection

p114-118 Extended discussion to refute Dawkins' "complexity of God" objection. Dawkins' statement: "Any God capable of designing a universe ... must be a supremely complex and improbable entity who needs an even bigger explanation than the one he is supposed to provide." The God Delusion p147

p114 Lennox points out that Dawkins' major logical error here is the presumption that explanations must proceed from the simple to the complex, like atoms to molecules to proteins. He asserts that Dawkins' argument falls apart like a house of cards when you consider that simple phenomena have complex foundations as explanations, the key being explanatory power:

Newton's falling apple needs Newton's laws and then Einstein's curved spacetime.
p115 Dawkins' 400pg God Delusion needs Dawkins' complex mind.
p116 Two scratches on a cave wall meaning 'human' needs the mind of the creator ascribing meaning to symbols.
p117 SETI searches for simple phenomena that could imply intelligent life.

p118 Miracles, chance, and the supernatural God and nature

p118 God is the reason the universe exists

p119 Francis Crick "The origin of life seems almost to be a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going."

p119-131 Mostly a discussion of God's creative activity and discussion of miracles, noting the kinds of objections to the possiblity of miracles.

p120 One of the most scornful rejections of miracles comes, unsurprisingly, from Richard Dawkins in "The God Delusion", p187

"The nineteenth century is the last time when it was possible for an educated person to admit to believing in miracles like the virgin birth without embarrassment. When pressed, many educated Christians are too loyal to deny the virgin birth and the resurrection. But it embarrasses them because their rational minds know that it is absurd, so they would much rather not be asked."

Lennox counters by naming Sir John Polkinghorne, Dr Francis Collins, and Dr William Phillips, physics Nobel laureate, all of whom have publicly asserted belief in the resurrection.

p120-121 Cites Ian Hutchinson, Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT, who says that "he and millions of other scientists around the world think that the literal miracle of the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is not only possible but it actually happened." A short quote is added on p124 "Still, the fact that the resurrection was impossible in the normal course of events was as obvious in the first century as it is for us. Indeed that is why it was seen as a great demonstration of of God's power."

p121 Cites Francis Collins on miraculous events:

"It is crucial that a healthy scepticism 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 possibility 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."

p121-129 Extensive discussion of David Hume in regard to miracles and other issues related.

p121 "David Hume .. asserted .. that miracles are 'violations of the laws of nature'. He regarded the laws as firmly established by experience and so the argument against them based on experience is as complete as you could ask for."

p122 Hume: "A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience as can be imagined. ... It is no miracle that a man, seemingly in good health, should die on a sudden: because such a kind of death, though more unusual than any other, has yet been frequently observed to happen. But it is a miracle that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed, in any age or country. There must,therefore, be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation."

p123 "Philosopher Anthony Flew, a world authority on Hume and once a much-feted atheist, radically revised his assessment of Hume":

"in the light of my new-found awareness that Hume was utterly wrong to maintain that we have no experience, and hence no genuine ideas, of making things happen and preventing things from happening, of physical necessity and physical impossibility. Generations of Humeans have ... been misled into offering analyses of causation and of natural law that have been far too weak because they had no basis for accepting the existence of either cause and effect or natural laws ... Hume's scepticism about cause and effect and his agnosticism about the external world are of course jettisoned the moment he leaves his study."

p125 Just touches on reflection of the role of quantum mechanics and divine action and refers off to Alvin Plantinga and his book "Where the Conflict Really Lies".

p125-126 Quotes of philosopher Daniel von Wachter relevant to the possibility of miracles.

p127 and 128 two relevant quotes of C. S. Lewis.

p129 At the close of this extensive discussion of David Hume, he adds a somewhat surprising quote sympathetic to theism and intelligent design!

"The whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent author; and no rational enquirer can, after serious reflection, suspend his belief a moment with regard to the primary principles of genuine Theism and Religion." From Introduction

There is also a similar thought from the participant Cleanthes in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion that we seem to see "the image of mind reflected on us from innumerable objects in nature." Lennox's response: "Many who quote Hume assiduously against miracles do not seem to be aware of his sympathy with intelligent design."

Part 3: Understanding the Universe and Life

7. Understanding the Universe: The Beginning and Fine Tuning

8. The Wonder of the Living World

9. The Genetic Code

10. A Matter of Information

11. Algorithmic Information Theory

12. Life's Solution: Self-Organization

Part 4: The Modern Synthesis

13. Life's Solution: Evolution?

14. Evolution: Asking Hard Questions

15. The Nature and Scope of Evolution

16. Natural Selection