Tag Archives: God’s Undertaker

Existence of God

Does the Anthropic Principle Explain the Fine Tuning of the Universe?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

One of the most fascinating discoveries of modern science has been that the universe is finely tuned to support human life.  Philosopher of science John Lennox, in his book God’s Undertaker, notes that “this perception on the part of scientists, that the universe has to be very precisely structured in order to support life, has been called the anthropic principle.”

Christian theists argue that this fine tuning calls for an intelligent creator of the universe as an explanation.  How do non-theists respond to the fine tuning of the universe?

Lennox explains:

Some scientists and philosophers maintain that we ought not to be surprised at the order and fine-tuning we see in the universe around us, since if it did not exist then carbon-based life would be impossible, and we would not be there to observe the fine-tuning.  In other words they use the anthropic principle against the inference of design.  In fact, Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion tells us that the anthropic principle and God function as alternative explanations.

One response, then, to fine tuning, is to say that we should not be surprised at fine tuning because if there were no fine tuning to explain the origin of intelligent observers, then we would not be alive, as intelligent observers, to observe the fine tuning.  Does this really explain anything, though?  This explanation seems like a sleight of hand, or no explanation at all.  Lennox reveals why we feel this way:

All the anthropic principle does is to tell us that for life to exist, certain necessary conditions must be fulfilled.  But what it does not tell us is why those necessary conditions are fulfilled, nor how, granted they are fulfilled, life arose.  Dawkins is making the elementary mistake of thinking that necessary conditions are sufficient.  But they are not: in order to get a first class degree at Oxford it is necessary to get into the University; but, as many students know, it is certainly not sufficient.  The anthropic principle, far from giving an explanation for the origin of life, is an observation that gives rise to the need for such an explanation.

One of the easiest ways to see that the anthropic principle, by itself, is not a sufficient explanation, is by reviewing an illustration given by philosopher John Leslie.  He says that using the anthropic principle against the design hypothesis

sounds like arguing that if you faced a firing squad with fifty guns trained on you, you should not be surprised to find that you were alive after they had fired.  After all, that is the only outcome you could possibly have observed – if one bullet had hit you, you would be dead.  However, you might still feel that there is something which very much needs explanation; namely why did they all miss?  Was it by deliberate design?  For there is no inconsistency in not being surprised that you do not observe that you are dead, and being surprised to observe that you are still alive.

Rather than give an explanation of the fine tuning of the universe, the anthropic principle merely invites us to ask for a real explanation.  I think we would all like to know why all 50 people in the firing squad missed us.

Science and God

Why Does Science Work?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Very few people ever think about why science works; they just take it for granted.  Some of the great scientists, however, have wondered about this question.  Philosopher John Lennox, in his book God’s Undertaker, quotes Albert Einstein’s ruminations on the question of why the universe is comprehensible:

You find it strange that I consider the comprehensibility of the world (to the extent that we are authorized to speak of such a comprehensibility) as a miracle or as an eternal mystery.  Well, a priori, one should expect a chaotic world, which cannot be grasped by the mind in any way . . . the kind of order created by Newton’s theory of gravitation, for example, is wholly different.  Even if man proposes the axioms of the theory, the success of such a project presupposes a high degree of ordering of the objective world, and this could not be expected a priori.  That is the ‘miracle’ which is being constantly reinforced as our knowledge expands.

Einstein is saying that we should expect a chaotic world, a world which cannot be grasped by the mind.  The fact that the world is able to be understood by human minds is a ‘miracle’ that deserves explanation.  In particular, why does physical reality map to mathematics?  Surely this fact demands an accounting.

Lennox notes that Paul Davies finds this mapping to be truly astounding.  Davies comments that much of the mathematics applied to modern science “was worked out as an abstract exercise by pure mathematicians, long before it was applied to the real world.  The original investigations were entirely unconnected with their eventual application.” (emphasis mine) Why?  Surely this is strange.

Lennox continues, “The relationship between mathematics and physics goes very deep and it is very hard to think of it as some random accident.”  Professor of Mathematics Roger Penrose has this to say: “It is hard for me to believe . . . that such superb theories could have arisen merely by some random natural selection of ideas leaving only the good ones as survivors.  The good ones are simply much too good to be the survivors of ideas that have arisen in a random way.  There must be, instead, some deep underlying reason for the accord between mathematics and physics.”

Not wanting to posit an agent behind this mystery, some skeptics will say that science itself explains the accord between math and physics.  But this cannot be so.  Lennox recounts the following words of John Polkinghorne: “Science does not explain the mathematical intelligibility of the physical world, for it is part of science’s founding faith that this is so.”

So why does science work?  Why do math and physics work together so well?  Lennox offers the Christian answer to this question:

The intelligibility of the universe is grounded in the nature of the ultimate rationality of God: both the real world and mathematics are traceable to the Mind of God who created both the universe and the human mind.  It is, therefore, not surprising when the mathematical theories spun by human minds created in the image of God’s Mind, find ready application in a universe whose architect was that same creative Mind.

The non-theist is left with a real quandary.  Without a Mind behind reality, the fact that abstract mathematics directly applies to reality remains a profound mystery.  The non-theist is left, in essence, with blind faith in science.

Science and God

Does Our Understanding of How the Universe Works Negate God’s Existence?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Some skeptics of Christianity are known to argue that the great success of science revealing the physical mechanisms of the universe should lead us to conclude that the God hypothesis is totally unnecessary.  Science will ultimately reveal the laws of nature, and once we know these laws, the need for God has vanished.  Does that follow?

Not according to Philosopher John Lennox in his book God’s Undertaker.  Lennox says, “Such reasoning involves a common logical fallacy.”  Here is how he illustrates the fallacy:

Take a Ford motor car.  It is conceivable that someone from a remote part of the world , who was seeing one for the first time and who knew nothing about modern engineering, might imagine that there is a god (Mr Ford) inside the engine, making it go.  He might further imagine that when the engine ran sweetly it was because Mr Ford inside the engine liked him, and when it refused to go it was because Mr Ford did not like him.

Of course, if he were subsequently to study engineering and take the engine to pieces, he would discover that there is no Mr Ford inside it.  Neither would it take much intelligence for him to see that he did not need to introduce Mr Ford as an explanation for its working.  His grasp of the impersonal principles of internal combustion would be altogether enough to explain how the engine works.

So far, so good.  But if he then decided that his understanding of the principles of how the engine works made it impossible to believe in the existence of a Mr Ford who designed the engine in the first place, this would be patently false – in philosophical terminology he would be committing a category mistake.  Had there never been a Mr Ford to design the mechanisms, none would exist for him to understand.

How does this illustration apply to God and the universe?  Lennox explains:

It is likewise a category mistake 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 upholder.

Hawking, Dawkins, and other atheistic scientists fail to understand this basic philosophical point.  One day, if there is a full and complete physical explanation of how every particle in the universe behaves, if we arrive at a set of equations that explains every physical mechanism, the fundamental question of where these equations came from will still need to be answered.  Scientists will not have eliminated the existence of Mr Ford.