The Argument in Favor of a God: Lennox (mathematician) and Dawkins (biologist).

 


First Reason: There's rationality in the universe, therefore there's a God.

Answer: Rationality is an adaptation to the natural environment. Animals use reason to survive. An animal uses reason when deciding not to jump over a cliff. (N.B. This is the Eat Dung and Die Principle. Cf. Leda Cosmides and John Tooby.)

Second Reason: There's a design in natural evolution.

Answer: It's a blind, mechanical process. No teleology. Design is an illusion. There are adaptations.

Third Reason: There's an agent, because there's a created world.

Answer: We don't need an agent for a mechanical world. Gravity is like evolution. No agent. Of course, Newton was a deist like everyone was in the 17th century. (N.B. Spinoza and the Radical Enlightenment were not deists; they were pantheists or atheists). 

Fourth Reason: There's a fine-tuned Universe. So, there's an agent. 

Answer: There's no explanation for that in biology but we can talk about that from (a philosophical point of view?).

Fifth Reason: Life produces mind. Therefore there must be a mind at the origin. It's impossible otherwise.

Answer: That does not follow. Your finding that impossible is called the Argument from Personal Incredulity.

Sixth Reason: In the beginning was the Logos. Rationality. (This is the First Reason repeated.)

Answer: That does not explain how the Logos was itself created. (N.B. This is the argument of infinite regression. Spinoza cut it by using the Principle of Sufficient Reason. As there is a substance, and substance is infinite, per regression, that infinite Substance is God or Nature. The All. Lennox is using the same principle of Sufficient Reason for the Logos as Spinoza for the Substance. Dawkins is using the Occam Razor Principle. The Universe is the origin, as it is simple. God is too complex for a beginning. Until more evidence is shown for the beginning of the universe, the origin stands in matter and nature as the beginning. It's simple.)

Seventh Reason: I read your book and the argument of simplicity was refuted. The simple book was created by your brain, a complex thing.

Answer: But in this case my brain that produced the book has an explanation in its own right. It's evolution, nature. (N.B. It is clear by now that Lennox is a Neoplatonic and Dawkins a Democritian.)

Eighth Reason: Your materalistic explanation is a reductionist explanation.

Answer: I don't think so. You're using the God-of-the-gaps idea to fill in those things we ignore yet. 

Ninth Reason: God brings forgiveness to me. (N.B. This is no argument at all. By the way, the Jesus Christ of Lennox did not exist as Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus the Christ was a mystical idea, not a human being born. Cf. Earl Doherty, Jesus: Neither God nor Man, 2009.)

Ninth Reason (again): In your world, where's Justice? (N.B. This is, again, no argument for a God.)

Answer: Justice is a human construct. 

Tenth Reason: If there is no God there is no ultimate Justice. (N.B. You cannot have a God because the natural world lacks teleology. Lennox, the more he talks about the world, the more he justifies the lack of a God. Cf. Epicurus Dilemma. Lennox had a better chance when talking about origins.)

Answer: Too bad. (N.B. Lennox then talks about faith being based on evidence, when it's clear faith is blind. That's its "merit" vs reason. This is a theological point too known to be ignored by Lennox. It's clear he's trying to get a way of reconciling faith and reason. That's what Newton and Moderate Enlightenment tried to do, and failed. Today science is based on the Radical Enlightenment position. Faith is an enemy to reason. Reason is critical, faith submissive. Reason is not dogmatic, faith is. Cf. Popper.)

Eleventh Reason: You say Jesus was disputed to have existed in History. Historians deny this. (N.B. Jesus the Christ was a mystical idea. Jesus of Nazareth created by Mark in his Gospel later. Historians are all theologians and financed by Churches. Independent historians have very good evidence that Jesus of Nazareth did not exist, while Jesus the Christ was a mystical idea. Cf. Earl Doherty. This is, by the way, no proof of God at all. Lennox is saying God exists because Jesus of Nazareth was on Earth and that is undisputed. Undisputed by Christians, but even religious people like Jews, Islamic people, Buddhists et al. deny Jesus of Nazareth was the incarnation of God, by the way.) 

Answer: There are some Historians but that is not the point. (N.B. Dawkins could have demolished Lennox here, but he ignores the issue of Jesus of Nazareth being an invention of Mark from a literary point of view. Cf. Richard Carrier, Earl Doherty, Raphael Lataster, et al.)

Twelfth Reason: So you do not care about morality. (N.B. Lennox is using now sophistical attacks against Dawkins to proof God exists or we kill ourselves on the street. The conversation is deteriorating the farther Lennox goes from the origin of the universe, the only space God has today, as evolution and science has displaced God from the rest of places where the idea used to be in the past. This is indicative of what Dawkins said before: Lennox is using the God-of-the-gaps idea as his only argumentative weapon.)

Answer: I do care about morality. Morality is born in nature, amid natural beings in society. I find Sagan's God a better, more respected idea of a God to argue about. (N.B. Which is, by the way, the God of Einstein, the God of Spinoza: Nature or Substance or God. The All.)









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