Does Nature Evidence God? – John Lennox – An Atheist Responds #10

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The fifth part in a response to John Lennox “Answering New Atheist Objections and Fallacies | John Lennox, PhD ”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KBlldaLkEHc

In this part John Lennox attempts to make two arguments as to why nature evidences god, broadly along the following lines:
1) Lennox makes the claim that, for some unexplained reason, a universe that was not created by a god or gods would be of a type that would be scientifically unexplorable or explainable. Our universe is explorable and explainable (ie “science works”) therefore God.
2) That, in a bastardisation of Plantinga’s EAAN, without deistic action all we would be left with to account for our ability to perceive the universe would be our evolutionary origins and Lennox claims that this is incapable of providing cognitive faculties that truthfully represent our universe. Lennox implies that our cognitive faculties DO truthfully represent the universe ergo God.

Part 1 of my response:

Part 2 of my response:

Part 3 of my response:

Part 4 of my response:

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38 thoughts on “Does Nature Evidence God? – John Lennox – An Atheist Responds #10”

  1. Even Newtonian physics were very counter counter intuitive at the time. people thought all moving objects will always slow down and stop so they must run out of something or get tired.

    Reply
  2. I'm completely confused by how Plantinga can make this argument and fail to realize the counter-factual reality he recuses is indeed the true reality. His argument is exactly right : we can't distinguish between the true reason to be afraid of tigers and a wrong reason. So… what about all those examples were we ARE afraid for the wrong reasons ? Essentially all humans are afraid of the dark. Mostly, they imagine ghosts and monsters lurking there. It's the wrong reason, as there are no ghosts or monsters lurking in the dark, but it's still an evolutionary advantage to be afraid of the dark for mammals like us who can't see in it, as they'll have less accidents and get killed less often by wild beasts. It's so easy to come up with examples. How can Plantinga not realize that after reaching the right conclusion ?

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  3. I actually think that Plantinga's argument as you have portrayed it is a good one and your counter arguments are less convincing to be honest. I just don't agree with the conclusion that therefore a creator God is somehow more likely. I don't think that God solves the problem at all: Why would a God necessarily give us the ability to reason properly?! He didn't do this with thousands of species on the planet, oh but that one species right there, yes, they'll be rational… or are we just programmed to delude ourselves? Nobody could possibly tell, not even God.

    Why I think that Plantinga has a point:
    1. Because I don't see how it's avoidable given the nature of evolution
    2. Because I think we actually have many examples of where this is the case: For example many people are afraid of the dark because they think there are ghosts there or something. Ghosts can't be scientifically demonstrated, but would be a good survival instinct -> You'll be safe from nightly predators. The cost of a false positive when it comes to danger is often very small, a false negative threat detection is often fatal . We actually observe irrational fears and irrational hypersensitivity quite often, which we would expect under evolution but not under the God-made-us-rational model.
    Or the fact that we ought to cooperate for mutual benefit for an evolutionary advantage. This involves thanking the people who do something for us (also with goods in return) in order to keep the contact, if both parties do that it will be a massive good for both sides. It's easy to imagine an intuition for gratitude evolving. That could have the side effect of thanking entities that don't exist. The sun rises for example and you want to thank whoever made that happen. You find food, you want to thank whoever made that happen -> burnt offerings to the bringer/creator of the sun/food. The belief in invisible social entities is a plausible side effect for social animals. Even though this side-effect-belief might be false, the net benefit will be positive and I think that "God" is an evolved intuition that, although false, had many survival advantages.

    -> Plantinga's argument can be used against the God hypothesis

    Reply
  4. Nice video, there something that keeps bug me is the question "why could not science proof that a god exist?" Now while like a lot of people i fall more on the Atheist side of things. No one can seem to answer that question, maybe because the level of humans on planet earth is still pretty low? For instance we still use fossil fuel as the main source of power, could it be are level of science and tech still needs to advance before we can say for sure? As for the people who thinks that god does not exist 1) then what happens after we leave this realm?

    2) Do you think that humans level of tech and science has reached a point to where you feel they can answer that? Now for myself i have to core theories with my level of understanding. 1) there is most likely god like beings in the universe now this is different from a god, these beings may of got there by tech or some other means but still would be gods to us. 2) Humans are still very primate when it comes to the understanding the development of the world around us, for instance why don't we have bases on the moon already? The tech been around since the 60th anyways sorry for the long form letter

    Steve

    Reply
  5. Religion encodes criteria for successful societies. Arguing against spiritual part is stupid squared. Against institutional part is plain linear stupid. Both because they are already forgotten by society. Ignoring the encoded prescriptions of religion is the core origin of societal meltdown we witness. Honestly. I'm an empirical guy by nature, and its measurement that brings me to this conclusion.

    If you want everyone to be rational, you will end up calling them all stupid.

    Reply
  6. Of course I generally agree with you. But, in response to your final question, why does our mind find Newtonian physics intuitive and not relativistic physics, obviously the theist would say that God made us to be able to understand the word at the level that we operate at. Why would God give us the ability to find relativistic physics intuitive if we don't operate at relativistic levels? Now, that said, the argument is still shit, of course….

    Reply
  7. The Lennox/Plantinger argument seems to be making falsifiable predictions, if God exists we can trust our senses and the way our mind interprets them completely, they will never fool us with false information. If God doesn't exist and we resulted from evolution alone our senses and mind should be mostly reliable but still fallible and prone to error and illusion. Well, which seems more like the human experience we observe?

    Reply
  8. EDIT: Bollocks, you went and said almost exactly this.

    13:02 – Well, Lennox is clearly wrong.

    1) We know that our senses are unreliable. Ever seen an optical illusion? That's just one example.
    2) We know that our reason (or mind, or intellect, however you want to describe it) is also unreliable. Ever make a mistake? We all have – we would never do so if our reason was perfectly reliable. We deal with these imperfections every day, like when we reach out to pour milk in our tea an accidentally grab the mustard instead.

    So given that we already KNOW that humans are, to all appearances, kludgey and unreliable in both our perception and reasoning, his argument (that is, iirc, that only a creator could give us perfectly* reliable reason) becomes entirely superfluous, because it is attempting to explain a state of affairs that does not actually exist.

    *_Edited for clarity.

    Reply
  9. Supreme truth, Heaven’s a lifetime away
    But I can reach hell in under a day
    If your going to do it, leave something witchy
    This is your dream girl, start living it ..pretty
    I get knowledge from the void above
    Voodoo devotion and lots a drugs

    Reply
  10. I've recently drifted back to the position that I held as a young atheist during my junior high days. Apologists like Lennox are terrified of their mortality. Lennox loves to flippantly use the word "fact" yet clearly is avoiding the greatest fact that has an emotional impact: We ALL die. Lennox wouldn't believe in his god if he wasn't being granted an afterlife. It's sadly that simplistic. They can pull out all of the bells and whistles but it truly boils down to a fear of death. It's petulant.

    Reply
  11. Oh dear. Another one claiming that because some scientists in the past believed in God, therefore, God?

    Galileo believed in God – yep, and the church persecuted him for his science.

    Newton did his science to praise God? Not only is there no truth in this, but would that be during Newton's occult studies into trying to transmute base metals into gold (this is a fact, look it up)?

    Same goes for Kepler and his fascination with numerology.

    Let's take this fallacy to it's logical conclusion.

    Neil Armstrong was a descendant of Johnnie Armstrong of Scottish Border legend.

    Neil Armstrong was very proud of his Scots ancestry.

    Neil Armstrong was the first human to set foot on the Moon.

    Therefore, the Moon is Scottish (I WISH).

    "Atheism… …tells us that the human mind is simply the accidental by-product of a mindless, purposeless process" (11:00)

    No, it does not. Atheism, the non-belief in god(s), makes absolutely no such claims, anywhere. There are indeed atheists who accept our minds coming about as a result of evolutionary biology, but while they may be very few in number, there are some atheists who reject evolution.

    And the number is immaterial, becuase atheism is completely irrelevant to how the human mind developed.

    Reply
  12. If their god had just made all sentient animals vegan, evolution of these animals would have been evidently impossible, and it would have evidenced that the creator wanted its creation to be free from suffering.

    Reply
  13. My feeling is that Mr Lennox is not trying to persuade any atheists but provide theists with a warm fussy feeling of being right. When the message is delivered by a person that seem so nice and smart and knowledgeable in the subject matter it can't be wrong, can it?
    But any atheist worth his or her salt will not be fooled for a minute.

    The irony of all this is that is exactly what many atheists content provider does, that is "preach to the choir". I happen to think the atheists arguments are way better but then I am an atheist so…..

    Reply

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