Here is a brief and almost impossibly concise rationalist apologia for Christian belief, given by the Oxford mathematician John Lennox.
I’ll quote just two little gems from his speech. The first:
“People are so desperate now to show that the universe created itself from nothing – which seems to me to be an immediate oxymoron: if I say ‘X created Y’, I am assuming the existence of X to explain the existence of Y; if I say ‘X created X’, I’m assuming the existence of X to explain he existence of X — which simply shows that nonsense remains nonsense even if high-powered scientists utter it. It reminds me a little bit of G. K. Chesterton, who said ‘It is absurd to complain that it is unthinkable for an unbthinkable God to make everything out of nothing, and then to pretend that it is more thinkable that nothing should turn itself into everything.'”
I think this one’s even better:
“Science, of course marvelous as it is, is limited. Even a Nobel Prize winner, by analyzing a cake, cannot tell why it was made. But Ant Matilda, who made it, can tell you! She can reveal it to you . But if she doesn’t reveal it to you, you’ll never know… It’s the same with the Universe. We can analyze it magnificently — but ultimately, if it has a Maker (and I believe it has), only He can tell you what it’s all about.”
Watch the whole thing; it’s only fifteen minutes long.
- Pilgrim’s Progress
- The Suffering Of The Innocent
- All Sail, No Ballast
- The Parallel Postulate
- Keep It Simple
- Bill Vallicella On Reason, Faith, And Doubt
- A Mathematician’s Case For Belief In God
- Believe It, Or Not
9 Comments
The reasoning you quote could be applied to God just as much as to reality, and we can at least *demonstrate* that reality exists.
Simpler to assume that reality has always existed in one form or another (or many) and is neither a cause nor an effect, but rather a necessary precondition for both.
jabrwok,
Is it really any simpler to assume that all of this exists merely as a brute fact, rather than as a manifestation of a creative intelligence? Given, for example, the exquisite fine-tuning of the laws and constants of nature, doesn’t your model have an awful lot of “‘splainin’ to do”?
For that matter, why not just believe that reality popped into existence one second ago, including all of your memories? That seems simplest of all, really.
Hey Malcolm,
Long time no hear. All is well here, from your previous post seems all well there. All is good.
Here’s you a gem of a resource to further your inquiries:
https://www.theosu.ca/
Came across that after listening to a Eric Metaxis radio interview of the two fellows responsible for gathering the “teachers” of the courses. One notable to me was titled Fun With Greek, the gist of it being: ‘Matthew and Peter were writing for the benefit of a literate audience and as such; took well known textual references (from Greek mythology no less!) and adapted those into their passages.’ The conceptual grounds coming from the idea they developed [?] called “intertextuals.”
(‘They’ being the two guys interviewed.)
You might want to give that site a little look-see.
Thanks for what you so accurately describe as a ‘brief and almost impossibly concise rationalist apologia for Christian belief’.
I also was gratified by the previous link, as well as BV’s, to N.S.Lyons, to whose substack i subscribe, and which article on China convergence I had already been engrossed by.
Good for you to enjoy family and friends and summer days.
The interview I mentioned:
https://metaxastalk.com/podcast/friday-august-18-2023
(Not the ‘encore’ with Dick Morris though.)
Thanks, JK, for these links, and mharko for the kind words.
Fine work from a clear thinker and mathematician to boot. It is also gratifying to see a reference to Chesterton as well. Too bad academia ‘laid him to rest’ years ago.
JK, good to see you stirring among the living.
But it’s a headlong leap from God to Yahweh and Son.
Deogolwulf! Good to hear from you, my friend. I’d been wondering how you were getting on.
It is indeed a headlong leap, as you say: a leap of faith, but clearly not at odds with reason, either, as I used to believe it was.
I’m still hoping I can arrive at a definite conclusion of some sort, one of these days.