I need to pull my head out of the stove for a bit but will return Monday to finish off the book - well over half way through.

I hope this is worthwhile.....?!

“Neigh!”

I dont know if you can hear me down there David - that’s an awfully deep hole you’re digging.

More and more, you appear to be equating Atheism with Darwin’s theory of Evolution via Natural Selection - inferring that EvNS is incompatible with Christianity (and since the heirarchy of the Anglican Church, including Sydney, accept it - Do you consider them Christian?), which is backing you into a very small corner.

As for Vitz’s article, it reminds me more of Christians who proudly proclaim: “I was a teenage atheist!” (rather like “I was a Teenage Werewolf"*) - far more than any atheists I know.

It’s certainly alien to my experience - you see, the more I tried to be a Christian - the more bizarre it’s beliefs became.

And I’m not sure if you’re aware, but it is precisely the forcefull presentation from people such as yourself which have ignited the responses from Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens et al - much more so than 11/09/01.

I realise that for many people, religion provides the only respite for the insurmantable travails they experience in daily life - and that my undermining of that certainty is a source of pain and discomfort to many.

I deeply regret this - and if I could at all avoid such results I would.

However proclamations such as yours demand a response - so hence forward, I will restrict my comments to downstairs - where they are far more at home.

Rob

* Not the lame ‘Michael J. Fox version’ - but the original 1950’s classic - for those of you who only know Michael Landon from ‘Little House on the Prairie’ - Check this out!

David Palmer - 18 April 2008 05:10 PM
I need to pull my head out of the stove for a bit but will return Monday to finish off the book - well over half way through.

I hope this is worthwhile.....?!

As long as you find it useful David, keep going :) (though I must admit I wasn’t reading quite so intently as earlier reviews ...).

Rob Callander - 18 April 2008 09:36 PM

“Neigh!”
As for Vitz’s article, it reminds me more of Christians who proudly proclaim: “I was a teenage atheist!” (rather like “I was a Teenage Werewolf"*) - far more than any atheists I know.

It’s certainly alien to my experience - you see, the more I tried to be a Christian - the more bizarre it’s beliefs became.

Hi Rob, I had a look at the Vitz article and found it amusing and reasonable that he was analysing the psychology of atheism. I guess the bottom line is that all people have reasons (valid or otherwise, conscious or subconscious) for believing as they do (about the existence of God).

Nice to see you back.

rgds

Rob Callander - 18 April 2008 09:36 PM

David

More and more, you appear to be equating Atheism with Darwin’s theory of Evolution via Natural Selection

Not so!

Stove is not equating atheism with Darwin’s theory. He does not in fact present himself as a friend of Christianity, as my review makes clear.

However, all the new atheists are heavily reliant on Darwin’s theory as their alternate meta narrative.

Stove is simply driving a tractor through that reliance and I therefore think his work should be better known. Putting a few pinpricks into the evolution balloon seems a worthwhile thing.

Christians need not be overawed by the pretensions of evolution!

That is my reason for reviewing Stove’s book.

Thank you for your comment Derek - I will finish my review of Stove early next week as I want to turn to John Lennox’ book. Lennox tells me that John Dickson has beaten me to the punch in having him come to Sydney in August, which is something all interested in the topic of atheism should follow up.

David Stove goes close to calling Richard Dawkins a charlatan.

The 7th essay, Genetic Calvinism, or Demons and Dawkins is the essay that Stove begins critiquing The Selfish Gene, the book that launched Dawkins career when it was published back in 1978. Stove expresses both amazement that the book achieved the success that it did as well as giving us a reason why it may have succeeded the way that it did.

His astonishment arises from his contention that the book represents an intellectual mischief. Dawkins big point is that is our genes that are self replicating. But as Stove says nothing can actually self replicate, the best that can be hoped for is a copy. Dawkins has linked “self replication” with genes being “selfish” (A book entitled The Selfish Gene” was always going to be more likely to sell than “The Self Replicating Gene”).

But as Stove says the object of my selfishness is never going to be the copy of myself, it is always going to be me. The copy may mean much to me but the one thing the copy can never possibly be is being the object of my selfishness. That can only be me! Talk of selfish genes is nonsense. Genes can be no more selfish than they can be supercilious or stupid.

So how come the runaway success of The Selfish Gene?

Stove thinks there is a parallel with Calvin’s alleged teaching concerning a cosmic conflict between God and the demons: Dawkins in like manner is positing a conflict between genes and according to Dawkins we are the pawns in this game where the only players are our genes.

In other words humans are the helpless puppets of their genes, causal agents of great power who, incidentally were unknown before the 20th century.

And says Stove this is all of a piece with that branch of literature (as well as the tabloid press!) much loved by all that concerns itself with revelations of wickedness in high (and low) places.

Stove acknowledges that Dawkins cannot maintain his puppetry theory consistently but makes passing contradictory nods in direction to human choice whilst always maintaining his primary position that we are at the mercy of our genes.

And of course people want relief from responsibility (much like the child caught thieving who accuses his mate, “he made me do it!” or men today able to enjoy sex without making the commitment of marriage, “its your problem, get an abortion!”) and puppetry theories such as The Selfish Gene offer them this relief. And of course people who see themselves as conspired against are more than willing to conclude the conspiracy is very widespread indeed.

The chapter concludes with Stove tearing into and making mincemeat of Dawkin’s notion of memes.

We have met memes in “The God Delusion” earlier. Suffice to say genes have to do with evolution by the natural selection of specific characteristics, cultural evolution is the result of a battle between memes in our brains.

So while we might say we are taught certain things by human agents (parents, teachers, the magistrate, etc), Dawkins says the causal agents are not humans but memes at work in the brain.

So says Stove

Ideally no doubt, Dawkins would have preferred to have just one super giant-sized conspiracy, to explain at once biology and culture. But not seeing his way to that, he insisted on at least having two giant-sized conspiracies, one for biology and one for culture. (p190)

One thing everyone should be crystal clear about: there is no scientific base for memes. It is all a part of Dawkins demonising. Dawkins, says Stove, has gone down the well worn track of assuming his conclusion and then in circular fashion proving it. “Memes” are just the name that Dawkins coined for the things which humans can communicate to one another non-genetically, viz language, ideas, etc. Calling these things “memes” is just a more arresting way of saying “our teacher taught us our 7 times table today”.

The 8th essay, “’He Ain’t Heavy, He’s my Brother,’ or Altruism and Shared Genes” delves into the problem that altruism is for neo Darwinism and in particular sociobiologists such as Dawkins. For the sociobiologists how much altruism any organism has towards another of the same species depends on the proportion of genes shared by both. Thus the sociobiologists will argue for kin altruism but would have us believe that there is no altruism, or none to speak of, outside kin altruism. This is all part of their inclusive fitness theory.

Stove makes considerable sport of the inclusive fitness theory.

Thus the theory would require
1. every woman to love each of her eggs as much as each of her children, each man love every one of his sperm as a father his son (on the basis of shared genes).
2. filial altruism should be as great as parental altruism on the basis of shared genes but everyone knows parental altruism vastly exceeds filial altruism.
3. adopted children to be poorly loved in comparison to natural children
4. were the life of others is at risk, the degree which someone will go to save a life depends on ties of kinship or not
5. and so the examples multiply.

Stove points out that the sociobiologists are not always consistent in their application of the inclusive fitness theory for at times they will argue that kin altruism is an illusion. In fact Stove concludes the chapter with this observation concerning “The Selfish Gene’:

if that book had said, clearly and consistently, either that kin altruism does not exist, or that it does, how much of its piquancy, and its sales, would have been lost! Its inconsistency on this fundamental point, while no doubt faithfully reflecting the author’s mind, was one of the very things which kept its readers interested and guessing. A source of interest to the readers, it was a source of income to the writer, and consistency would have cost him money. (p247)

In the 9th essay, a short one, “A New Religion”, Stove making the observation

….suppose someone says that human beings and all other organisms are just tools or devices designed, made, and manipulated by so-and-sos for their own ends. Then he implies that so- and-sos are more intelligent and capable than human beings.
…..

Richard Dawkins writes that “we are….. robot-vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes,” and again that we are “manipulated to ensure the survival of (our) genes.”
….

According to the Christian religion, human beings and all other created things exist for the greater glory of God; according to sociobiology, human beings and all other living things exist for the benefit of their genes. (p249)

moves seamlessly to the conclusion that our genes are the new gods:

If (the sociobiologists are right), it will be an immense historical irony. Religion, which was driven out of biology by nineteenth-century Darwinism, will have been put back by—of all people—the extremists of neo-Darwinism. (p256)

Essay 10, “Paley’s Revenge, or Purpose Regained” brings in the famous design argument for the existence of God formulated in William Paley’s “Natural Theology” (1802) and argues that Richard Dawkins has brought us full circle in a modified way back to Paley’s argument on purpose.

Paley’s argument for God as the purposive agency for creation after 1859 gave way to Darwin’s notion that the creation of the species was not the result of divine, or of any other, purpose, intelligence or engineering skill but rather

…it is an effect of altogether blind forces: namely, the pressure of population, variation, and the resulting struggle for life among unequally endowed competitors. (p263)

But now ironically through Dawkins’ development of the concept of “the selfish gene”, the neo Darwinian explanation of adaptation by reference to the purposes of intelligent and powerful agents (genes and memes) bears striking resemblance to Paley’s argument.

(Dawkins) agrees with Paley that the adaptations of organisms are due to the purposive agency (more specifically, the selfish and manipulative agency) of beings far more intelligent and powerful than humans or any other organisms.

Dawkins has some disagreements with Paley, of course; but this really is a matter of course. When did two theists ever agree on all points? For example, Paley believed in the benevolence of God… Dawkins, on the other hand ascribes to the gods of his religion a ruthlessly selfish character.
….

… Dawkins, differs from Paley only about the number of the gods responsible for adaptation, and about their moral quality: not about their existence, purposiveness, intelligence, or power. (p267,269)

How delicious!

The rest of the chapter is spent justifying this conclusion, especially since Dawkins would deny that he attributes any purpose to genes. Stove as with the inclusive fitness is able to show a lack of consistence for Dawkins does in fact use the language of purpose and Stove gives numerous examples to demonstrate from his writing to demonstrate that this is the case. 

……for every once that Dawkins says that genes are not purposive, he says a hundred things (many of which I have quoted) which imply that genes are purposive. And that Williams, likewise, says countless

Manipulation by genes … is the central conception of the new religion, as I pointed out in Essay 9. But the manipulation logically requires the presence of an intention or purpose. If there is no intentional causal influence, then there is no manipulation. (272,273

In the final essay, “Errors of Heredity, or the Irrelevance of Darwinism to Human Life”, Stove returns to an earlier theme that that as humans we don’t have as many descendents as we should have and so we are in Darwinian talk, biological errors.

How so?

Stove cites the following examples of our errors:
1. some people are naturally celibate
2. the way men (and animals) when fighting one of their own species accept signals of submission from its opponent
3. a bereaved mother’s stealing and “adopting” another mother’s baby and the real mother’s resenting this baby snatching, rather than getting on and having another baby.
4. the love of truth resulting in people devoting themselves to science, philosophy or religion
5. love of beauty spending hours to listening to music instead of getting on ensuring more children and grandchildren
6. heroism and so losing life early
7. homosexuality, contraception, and so on, with many citations from evolutionists

All clearly prejudicial to having as many descendents as one could.

And so to his conclusion

…far from every attribute being rigidly destroyed which is in the least degree injurious, in our species there is precious little except injurious attributes. Nearly everything about us, or at least nearly everything which distinguishes us from flies, fish, or rodents—all the way from practicing Abortion to studying Zoology—puts some impediment or other in the way of our having as many descendants as we could. From the point of view of Darwinism, there is no good in us, or none worth mentioning. We are a mere festering mass of biological errors.

Which means, of course—once you turn that statement the right way up—that on the subject of our species, Darwinism is a mere festering mass of errors: and of errors in the plain honest sense of that word too, namely, falsities taken for truths. Darwinism can tell you lots of truths about plants, flies, fish, etc., and interesting truths too, to the people who are interested in those things. But the case is altogether different, indeed reversed, where our own species is in question. If it is human life that you would most like to know about and to understand, then a very good library can be begun by leaving out Darwinism, from 1859 to the present hour.

Well,

I have got to the end of Stove’s “Darwinian Fairytales”. I know it was probably hardgoing for those who have attempted to stay with me. As mentioned earlier I’m not bringing this book in to fight atheism, but atheism as exemplified by Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, Onfray and Harris is heavily dependent upon Darwinism.

Stove’s work is helpful in removing the pretensions of Darwinism as a superior meta narrative to the plotline of the Bible. We don’t need to remain in the bunkers over evolution. This is not to say for example that some factual basis for something approximating memes won’t be found, its just that as a theory evolution is a long way from pushing God out of the picture and I suggest the possibility of that occurring is receding not increasing.

But then atheism is not solely reliant on the fate of evolution by natural selection.

My next project is to reread Lennox’s excellent “God’s Undertaker - has science buried God” and attempt a review of that. Additionally I’m well into David Marshall’s “The Truth behind the New Atheism” which is excellent - lots of good counter arguments to Dawkins et al.

Cheers for now

Your research is valuable, David.  Please carry on.

Can I comment on the phrase towards the end of your last post:  “....evolution by natural selection”

Yes, natural selection explains the survival of the fittest, but it does not explain the arrival of the fittest.

YECs like me believe in natural selection too - it is similar to animal breeding.  More helpful characteristics are more likely to be emphasized in the next generation.

But the real question for the atheist or evolutionist is - where did these helpful charactistics come from in the first place?  Were they already present in the original created genome, and just waiting for the right circumstances to arrive to be expressed? YECs say Yes.
The atheist/eviolutionist must say No, they arose recently by chance. However, the only mechanism that could produce this is mutation- accidental variation in the genome.  This is neo-Darwinism.

Yes, mutations occur frequently. But they cause a loss of information. This may ocasionally have some local benefit (a wingless beetle on a windy island), but are usually either neutral, or harmful, causing genetic diseases. They have never been observed to create new complex systems like an eye or wing etc, as the atheist/evolutionist believes must have happened.

Natural selection is not in dispute.  The origin of new features to be selected is the problem. Evolution needs more than natural selection, it needs new complex information - vast quantities of it.

Review of “God’s Undertaker: has science buried God” by John C Lennox, Reader in Mathematics at Oxford University.

This is a little and unpretentious book of 179 pages, with most chapters under 20 pages. But it is also a sustained and densely packed argument which I found compelling and certainly a book to be savoured and included in our apologetic armoury vis a vis the new atheists with their dependence upon the Darwinian hypothesis.

For those who would like to listen to Lennox, here is a link to his debate with Richard Dawkins last October.

As Lennox explains in his preface, the question addressed in this book is, “which worldview sits most comfortably with science: theism or atheism?” (p13). If writers like Dawkins and Dennett (and he adds another colleague at Oxford, a Professor Peter Atkins) are free to argue a scientific base for the metaphysical position of atheism, then by the same token he ought to have the same freedom to argue the case for theism, even as he notes that that freedom is contested,.

The first chapter is appropriately entitled “War of the Worldviews” for that is what we are confronted with. Our opponents seek to sweep the ground from under our feet with the assertion that their worldview is based on fact, ie science whilst ours is based on faith which has nothing to do with evidence.

To the contrary, says Lennox,

….mainstream Christianity will insist that faith and evidence are inseparable. Indeed, faith is a response to evidence, not a rejoicing in the absence of evidence. …..  It is no part of the biblical view that things should be believed where there is no evidence.” (p15)

This is a really important point that we do well to dwell upon. Christianity whilst being more is never less than evidence based. And this is not to skirt the issue of presuppositions. But it is to say that preachers and teachers do well frequently, even persistently, to remind their people and students that history, archaeology and the careful study of Scripture and comparative literature are the friends of Christianity and not its foes. The Bible needs no apology: understanding yes, but no apology and our people can be assured on this and for those so inclined, encouraged to go and examine the evidence for themselves. One glaring deficiency with Dawkins is that he shows absolutely no evidence of having engaged with serious Christian thinkers, a point that Lennox makes.

Lennox points out that science is impossible without the conviction that the universe is orderly and introduces the first of the many, many quotations with which the book is filled. This time a Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry, a Melvin Calvin who wrote in 1969 is reported as saying:

As I try to discern the origin of that conviction, I seem to find it in a basic notion discovered 2,000 or 3,000 years ago, and enunciated first in the Western world by the ancient Hebrews: namely that the universe is governed by a single God, and is not the product of the whims of many gods, each governing his own province according to his own laws, This monotheistic view seems to be the historical foundation for modern science.’ (p19)

So much for the ancient Greeks! Rodney Stark in “For the Glory of God” makes the same point in greater detail.

Lennox concludes the chapter by asserting that the real conflict is not between science and religion but between “two diametrically opposed worldviews: naturalism and theism”, a theme Lennox comes back to, time and time again. “They inevitably collide” (p27)

Lennox helpfully defines and distinguishes naturalism and materialism. (Materialists hold to matter only that can be accessed by the senses whereas naturalism can be a broader concept allowing for mind and consciousness to be distinguished from matter, which is where for example Sam Harris (“The End of Faith”), a Buddhist masquerading among the atheists, diverges from Richard Dawkins).

Naturalism, … in common with materialism, stands opposed to supernaturalism, insisting that ‘the world of nature should form a single sphere without incursions from outside by souls or spirits, divine or human’. Whatever their differences, materialism and naturalism are therefore intrinsically atheistic. (p28)

Lennox quotes Carl Sagan, as a representative naturalist, “The cosmos is all there ever is, or was, or ever shall be” and a longer definition from Sterling Lamprecht,

(naturalism is) a philosophical position, an empirical method that regards everything that exists or occurs to be conditioned in its existence or occurrence by causal factors within one all-encompassing system of nature’ . (p29)

Thus, says Lennox, according to this view, there is nothing but nature. It is a closed system of cause and effect. There is no realm of the transcendent or supernatural. There is no ‘outside’.

Against these views we have the opening words of Genesis, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” and so Lennox concludes the chapter with the question he will answer:

What we are really asking is: Which worldview does science support, naturalism or theism? (p29)

In chapter 2 Lennox discusses “The scope and limits of science”.

His method is to demonstrate a common view that science has the ability to explain everything in our universe entirely in physical terms and then to show that such a position is an impossibility.

Thus he quotes the Nobel Laureate Christian de Duve writing in 2002:

Scientific enquiry rests on the notion that all manifestations in the universe are explainable in natural terms, without supernatural intervention. Strictly speaking, this notion is not an a priori philosophical stand or profession of belief. It is a postulate, a working hypothesis that we should be prepared to abandon if faced with facts that defy every attempt at rational explanation. Many scientists, however, do not bother to make this distinction, tacitly extrapolating from hypothesis to affirmation. They are perfectly happy with the explanations provided by science. … They have no need for the ‘God hypothesis’ and equate the scientific attitude with agnosticism, if not with outright atheism. (p 33)

This as Lennox points out is a position in which science is practically inseparable from a metaphysical commitment to an agnostic or atheistic viewpoint. Indeed Lennox goes on to quote the Harvard geneticist, Richard Lewontin, who makes clear that his materialistic convictions are a priori in the following extraordinary statement made in 1997.

Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs… in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment… to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. (p34)

However the idea that science can deal with every aspect of existence is nonsense. Thus how can science tell us whether a poem is a good poem or a bad poem; a painting a masterpiece or a confusion of brush strokes and so on. Another example: definition and teaching of morality lies outside science (I know Dawkins, Harris and Hitchens try to prove otherwise, but frankly their argument was simply unconvincing, trivial at best).

Science is good a handling the “how” questions but not the “why” questions. Aristotle famously distinguished between what he called the four causes: the material (what something is made of), the formal (ie the shape of whatever is being worked on), the efficient (how the work proceeds) and the final cause – the purpose of the work, and it is this cause that lies beyond science’s reach.

It is a “category mistake”, says Lennox,

to suppose that our understanding of the impersonal principles according to which the universe works makes it either unnecessary or impossible to believe in the existence of a personal Creator who designed, made, and upholds the universe. In other words, we should not confuse the mechanisms by which the universe works either with its cause or its upholder. (p44)

Chapter 3, “Reduction, reduction, reduction…”, is clearing more rubble away, a short chapter directed at “the God of the gaps” argument.

In this chapter Lennox makes the altogether reasonable point that theists, at least Christian ones are not in the habit of wheeling in “God” to explain what is otherwise unexplainable but rather recognises that all the bits that we understand plus all the bits that we don’t, equally bear the marks of God’s handiwork.

The very success of science, says Lennox (and he is drawing on the work of the Christian philosopher, Richard Swinburne),

in showing us how deeply ordered the natural world is provides strong grounds for believing that there is an even deeper cause for that order.

The point to grasp here is that, because (contra Dawkins) 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.  (p47)

The fourth chapter, “Designer Universe?”, requires a better mind than mine to even partially comprehend, for it concerns the wonder of the Universe and our own environs in which we as small specks are embedded. As Lennox points out, cosmology on an unimaginably large scale and elementary particle physics on an incredibly small scale lay bare to us the spectacularly beautiful structure of the universe in which we live.

In this chapter Lennox piles point upon point:

1. The first is that the rational intelligibility of the universe, itself presupposing a rationality capable of recognising that intelligibility, has led thinkers of all generations to conclude that the universe itself must be the product of intelligence. The universe is not self explanatory, but requires some explanation beyond itself.

2. Not only is the fact that the universe is intelligible amazing, but the mathematical nature of that intelligibility is remarkable. It is not surprising therefore to postulate that the mathematical theories spun by human minds created in the image of God’s Mind should find ready application in a universe whose creator was that same creative Mind.

3. Contra Dawkins and his foolish notion that faith means blind faith, faith itself is insuperable from the scientific enterprise. The belief that there are dependable regularities of nature as an act of faith is indispensable to the progress of science.

4. And then the issue, why is there a universe at all, why is there something and not nothing? The non theist struggles with such a question. Thus the Australian Paul Davies says it happened because of a set of clever mathematical laws, but how so? A law presupposes an agent, a law is but a mode according to which an agent proceeds.

5. Rather than existing eternally the evidence is mounting that the universe had a beginning and is therefore not ultimate

6. Furthermore a remarkable picture is gradually emerging from modern physics and cosmology of a universe whose fundamental forces are amazingly, intricately, and delicately balanced or ‘fine-tuned’ in order for the universe to be able to sustain life. Thus as one example, recent research has shown that many of the fundamental constants of nature, from the energy levels in the carbon atom to the rate at which the universe is expanding, have just the right values for life to exist. Change any of them just a little, and the universe would become hostile to life and incapable of supporting it. Lennox quotes Paul Davies (p70), no theist, “It seems as though someone has fine tuned nature’s numbers to make the universe… The impression of design is overwhelming”.

7. And lastly, the universe has been very precisely structured in order to support life (the so called anthropic principle). The are only two possible explanations. The existence of infinitely many parallel universes in which anything theoretically possible will be realised, one such universe being ours, or else secondly, design requiring only one universe. No evidence exists for the first explanation, whereas the second with economy and elegance posits a single universe according to, in the words of John Polkinghorne, scientist and Christian minister, “the will of a creator who purposes that it should be so”

In the following chapters, Lennox moves into the contested terrain of living things, which provides me with a natural break to do other things.

I have just posted the link to the Dawkins Lennox debate several posts above.

In one of my earlier posts on Lennox, I cut out a paragraph giving one of Lennox’s quotes from Michael Ruse, a evolutionary biologist. Here is an interesting link to an exchange of letters between Ruse and Daniel Dennett

Dear One and All, O great Silent Ones, hello! I know you are there!

Today I want to review two great chapters in John (waffle-free) Lennox’s “God’s Undertaker”. I must say in rereading the book, bearing in mind that I read it three months ago with moderate though appreciative understanding, I now find it even more compelling, even exhilarating.

I will take the two chapters together in several parts.

Koorong are selling it at just a snip, $16.95 to be exact, less than a quarter tank full of petrol for the kind of modest car driven by the modest and polite scrummagers frequenting this forum, Notice I said “scrummagers” and not “scrouchers” (Gordon C take note, new word).

Part 1

Chapter 5 Designer Biosphere? is the chapter where Lennox tackles the issue of how come when on the one hand, there is the almost instinctive and overwhelming temptation to infer from the existence and nature of biological information that it has an intelligent origin, yet some of the very people who grant that the temptation is strong resist it because they are convinced that no designer is necessary; unguided, mindless, evolutionary processes can and did do it all.

The chapter opens with a discussion of the design argument drawing in Paley, Hume, Dawkins and Dennett.

Actually the chapter begins with two memorable quotes one from William Paley and the other from Richard Dawkins (p76)

‘But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place… The watch must have had a maker: there must have existed… an artificer… who formed it for the purpose which we find it actually to answer; who comprehended its construction and designed Its use… Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater or more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation.’
William Paley

‘The only watchmaker in nature is the blind forces of physics, albeit deployed in a very special way. A true watchmaker has foresight: he designs his cogs and springs, and plans their interconnections, with a future purpose in his mind’s eye. Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind’s eye, it does not plan for the future, It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is that of the blind watchmaker.’
Richard Dawkins FRS

Dawkins freely admits that living objects overwhelmingly look designed, yet according to Francis Crick, biologists must keep constantly in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.

How come, asks Lennox?

Well, because in their view evolutionary processes without intelligent inputs are sufficient for the rich complexity of life, and this view Lennox says is forced on them by their presuppositions, a point we come to in due course.

At this point there follows a fascinating run down on the design argument leading to Paley’s formulation of it in the publication of his Natural Theology, or Evidence for the Existence and Attributes of the Deity (1802). As recounted by Lennox, Paley was savaged by Hume on the basis that Paley’s extension from the mechanics of a watch to living things was an argument from analogy, and analogies do not necessarily hold. But as Lennox points out this disallowing of an analogous argument can be overplayed and besides,

since Paley’s time, developments in science have shown that there are many kinds of systems within living organisms for which the term ‘molecular machine’ is entirely appropriate and among which are to be found biological clocks that are responsible for the vital molecular timekeeping function within the living cell and which are of vastly greater sophistication than Paley’s illustrative watch. Indeed, ‘machine’ language is ubiquitous in cutting-edge molecular biology

In any case, Hume might have been astonished to learn that it would one day be possible in laboratories in this world for human intelligence to design biochemical systems and construct proteins, and that, in all probability not that far beyond the present horizon, it will be possible to construct simple organisms from their molecular components. What would Hume have to say then? The design argument has turned out to be very much more robust than Hume thought, though it is important to keep his caution about analogies in mind even though much of the force of his objection has been dissipated by more recent progress in biology. (p83)

(Interesting at this point to reflect on what Stove (“Darwinian Fairytales”) had to say about the revenge of Paley, ie the way Dawkins replaces God with the many (gene)gods.)

Having allowed himself this digression re Paley’s design argument making a comeback, Lennox goes on to consider the widespread contention of why evolution eliminates the need of a Creator, ie the view that atheism is the logical consequence of evolutionary theory.

Part 2

So does evolution exclude God?

Lennox contends, as he has done previously, that what he calls a “category” mistake is in play, ie God and evolution belong to different categories. Evolution purports to be a biological mechanism, whilst we who believe in God regard Him as a personal agent. As Lennox puts it,

The existence of a mechanism is not in itself an argument for the non-existence of an agent who designed the mechanism. (p87)

According to Lennox, what Dawkins has done (no doubt in a scrofulous way - love the word) has been to conflate the two categories, and so practice a deceit on his gullible readership. Dawkins engages in a subtle rhetorical subterfuge of personifying the evolutionary process so as to make the reader think that Dawkins has argued away real personal agency when he has done no such thing.

In fact at no point has he even attempted to address the question of whether or not personal agency is involved. It is a very clever sleight of mind. (p88)

But this is the way that Dawkins does it: evolution has no need for a personal Creator, therefore evolution requires atheism.

His running mate, Dennett (I was tempted to replace “mate” with “dog” but Dennett is the senior of the two and a notable philosopher by all accounts, but how he was taken in by memes requires some accounting)

(t)o use the language of Aristotle, … claims that it is the very nature of the efficient cause (evolution) that rules out the very existence of a final cause (divine intention). (p92)

Lennox next produces an impressive list of current notable scientists (Dawkins had said in The God Delusion” he only knew of three) who reject such a connection between evolution and atheism.

So why the persistent link between evolution as a God substitute and atheism?

Well, says Lennox, a man can lose his head for asking such a question, for there is a TABOO on questioning evolution. This is a no go area.

So Lennox dutifully says that he has no intention of denying that natural selection has an important role to play in the variations we see in the world around us – it is just that evolution cannot carry all the weight placed on it. Don’t be fooled by this. Lennox is more than a little sceptical about evolution (but then its all about what you mean by “evolution” which we are coming to!).

The reason Lennox offers for the persistent link between evolution as a God substitute and atheism is that for many evolutionists (and I think he means “many, many” evolutionists), evolution has played the role of secular religion.

What has happened is that the materialism, ie the naturalism of these people actually requires biological evolution (my emphasis). In fact, says Lennox, the requirement, the sheer logical necessity (as Lennox expresses it ) of naturalism for evolution can be historically traced from the Greek materialist philosopher Epicurus, through the Roman poet Lucretius to be enthusiastically revived at the time of the Renaissance.

Thus, says Lennox,

In the contemporary scientific world we thus have the very unusual situation that one of science’s most influential theories, biological macro-evolution) stands in such a close relationship to naturalistic philosophy that it can be deduced from it directly — that is, without even needing to consider any evidence….  (p96)

So now we understand the hostility of Dawkins et all to the Intelligent Design (surely a tautology!) crowd. It is this a priori philosophical pressure from the reigning naturalistic or materialistic paradigm that demands, “hands off” and can result in loss of tenure, shunning, name calling, ostracism for any infraction.

I find it a delicious irony (or maybe sad irony) to read Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris rail against the medieval Catholic Church’s inquisition of heretics when the evolutionists on the basis of their naturalism do precisely the same thing.

Of course Lennox can’t leave the matter here.

What if evolution in its neo Darwinian form is the best and only explanation?

The following chapters go on to address this issue.

Chapter 6, “The Nature and Scope of Evolution”, covers familiar ground I’m sure for most of us, beginning with a definition of evolution. Five types of evolution are defined.

1. Change, development, Variation
2. Microevolution: variation within prescribed limits of complexity, quantitative variation of already existing organs or structures
3. Macroevolution
4. Artificial selection, for example in plant and animal breeding
5. Molecular evolution, ie the emergence of the living cell from non-living materials

Says Lennox, and unexceptionally so, none of us have a problem with 1,2 and 4.

Part 3

Lennox makes a series of points, including some great quotes, which I will give in numbered form

1. the frequent citation of examples of microevolution as examples of evolution, by implication molecular and macroevolution, is a deceit

2. natural selection by its very nature does not, contra Dawkins, create novelty

3. in respect of microevolution:

a. “microevolution looks at adaptations that concern only the survival of the fittest not the arrival of the fittest” (p106)

b. “The mutation-selection mechanism is an optimization mechanism.’ That is, it enables an already existing living system to adapt selectively to changing environmental conditions much in the same way as genetic algorithms facilitate optimization in engineering. It does not, however, create anything radically new” Paul Erbrich (p107)

c. the vast majority of mutations observed in the laboratory have deleterious effects

d. in work on fruit flies and E. coli bacterium involving many thousands of generations, the capacity for variation in the gene pool seems to run out quite early on in the process, a phenomenon called genetic homeostasis. There appears to be a barrier beyond which selective breeding will not pass because of the onset of sterility or exhaustion of genetic variability If there are limits even to the amount of variation the most skilled breeders can achieve, the clear implication is that natural selection is likely to achieve very much less.

4. Lennox makes the observation that whilst microevolution concerns observable phenomena and so is open to the methods of inductive science neither molecular or macroevolution are open to such methods:

Because they are largely concerned with claims about unrepeatable past events, we have to approach them using methods appropriate to historical science; principally, the method of inference to the best explanation, or ‘abduction’, which methodology by definition does not carry the same kind of authority as that rightly enjoyed by inductive science. (p109)

Now, considering the hammering Dawkins, Hitchens et al give to the veracity of the Bible, I extend to myself the indulgence of pointing out that just as macroevolution concerns unrepeatable, unobserved past events, yet open as Lennox says to historical science, so Christianity based on “unrepeatable, unobserved past events” also is open to such verification and I bet my bottom dollar the evidence for the foundations of Christianity far outstrip those for molecular and macroevolution.

Clambering out of my self imposed numbering system, Lennox completes this particular chapter by looking into the improbability of the mathematics for evolution (I think he will come back to this) and the paucity of the fossil record, which remains one of the chief obstacles to the theory of evolution because of:
- the problem of stasis, ie the stability of the species over time, and
- the sudden, not gradual appearance of new species.

Some great usable quotes in this section. The book is full of excellent quotes and sound persuasive argument for sermon/teaching purposes, so go to Koorong, cheerfully pass over a quarter tank of petrol, and you won’t be disappointed.

I will return next week, DV.