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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: John Lennox
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Tyler Durden
Shipmate
# 2996
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Posted
I've just been skimming through Prof John Lennox's book 'God's Undertaker'. He appears to be advocating some form of Intelligent Design (that is, he accepts 'micro evolution' but thinks 'macroevolution' can only be explained by divine intervention). Or am I missing something?
He also seems to suggest that lots of scientists reject the neo-Darwinian synthesis (for scientific reasons not religious?) but if so, that's news to me.
If this is a dead horse, please redirect me but Im interested in specific rebuttals to his arguments...
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Have you ever noticed that anyone driving slower than you is a moron, while anyone driving faster is a maniac? Jerry Seinfeld
Posts: 509 | From: Kent | Registered: Jul 2002
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Tyler Durden:
He also seems to suggest that lots of scientists reject the neo-Darwinian synthesis (for scientific reasons not religious?) but if so, that's news to me.
My impression is that IDists persistently confuse tinkering around at the edges with throwing over the whole thing from the foundations.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Sipech
Shipmate
# 16870
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Posted
I've heard some say that Lennox has drifted towards ID of late, though I've never heard him advocate it. That said, I've heard him speak a few times but not yet read the book in question.
In stating the rejection by some of neo-Darwinian synthesis (NDS) is that in favour of punctuated equilibrium? Or does he not detail what models might be used instead of NDS?
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I try to be self-deprecating; I'm just not very good at it.
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Tyler Durden
Shipmate
# 2996
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Posted
Need to check but having watched an online debate between him and Dawkins, he seems to be suggesting that when there's a sudden/rapid change is because God has intervened! So, sort of Divine Punctuated Equilibrium? But how do most biologists explain 'macroevolution'?
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Have you ever noticed that anyone driving slower than you is a moron, while anyone driving faster is a maniac? Jerry Seinfeld
Posts: 509 | From: Kent | Registered: Jul 2002
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
hosting/
I'm not sure whether it was since its creation or whether it's just blindly evolved that way, but this is now definitely a Dead Horse. Get ye hence...
/hosting
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Tyler Durden:
how do most biologists explain 'macroevolution'?
The same way they explain 'microevolution', the gradual accumulation of variation with external selection pressure favouring some variants over others.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
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quetzalcoatl
Shipmate
# 16740
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Tyler Durden:
Need to check but having watched an online debate between him and Dawkins, he seems to be suggesting that when there's a sudden/rapid change is because God has intervened! So, sort of Divine Punctuated Equilibrium? But how do most biologists explain 'macroevolution'?
This sounds like the argument from incredulity - I can't believe that so many changes happened so quickly! Usually spoken by someone who is not equipped in any case, to assess rates of evolution, for example, in the Cambrian explosion, and who usually ignore pre-Cambrian evolution in any case. Let's call it hijacking science in the name of dogma.
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I can't talk to you today; I talked to two people yesterday.
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by TheAlethiophile:
In stating the rejection by some of neo-Darwinian synthesis (NDS) is that in favour of punctuated equilibrium?
That's the sort of thing I mean by tinkering round the edges. Punctuated equilibrium is a modification within the framework of of the neo-Darwinian synthesis. It's in no way an alternative to the neo-Darwinian synthesis. Punctuated equilibrium affirms hereditable random mutation, preferential reproduction of traits favoured by the environment, and of Mendelian genetics.
(The difference between punctuated equilibrium and its rivals is simply that punctuated equilibrium believes that most species evolve to a local peak fitness for their ecosystem rapidly within geological time. So under nearly all circumstances, nearly all random mutations will fail to propagate themselves. It's only under situations where the ecosystem is changing that organisms will throw up random mutations that increase their offspring's chances of breeding and therefore that evolution will happen.)
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
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Alan Cresswell
Mad Scientist 先生
# 31
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Dafyd:
(The difference between punctuated equilibrium and its rivals is simply that punctuated equilibrium believes that most species evolve to a local peak fitness for their ecosystem rapidly within geological time. So under nearly all circumstances, nearly all random mutations will fail to propagate themselves. It's only under situations where the ecosystem is changing that organisms will throw up random mutations that increase their offspring's chances of breeding and therefore that evolution will happen.)
To be precise, random mutations are always happening (although there may be environmental factors such as changes in solar radiation flux or volcanic derived mutagenic chemicals which change the rate of mutation). In any given environment some of those mutations will be detrimental to survival and rapidly disappear from the gene pool, many will have no significant effect on survival, and a few will be beneficial to survival. Punctuated evolution postulates that beneficial genes will very rapidly dominate the gene pool, so while the environment remains unchanged populations are always (very nearly) optimally adapted to that environment. A change in the environment will change the external selection pressure. At that point those accumulated genetic changes with very little survival impact may suddenly become very advantageous, or not, to survival and there will be a rapid shift in the mean genetic code for the population as a small number of genetic variants suddenly dominate. Populations lacking the necessary genetic variants to adapt to the new environment become extinct.
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Don't cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
I haven't read the book, but the preface and a small bit of Chapter 1 are available at its Amazon page. Given what's there, I probably won't be reading the rest. Lennox seems upset that the Universe is not set up for his personal ego gratification and displays (or feigns) a shocking lack of familiarity with the history and motives of the Intelligent Design movement. Plus Richard Dawkins is a big meanie! At least that's what I was able to glean from the Preface, which theoretically exists to give a broad overview and encourage readers to read the rest.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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EtymologicalEvangelical
Shipmate
# 15091
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Croesos
Lennox seems upset that the Universe is not set up for his personal ego gratification...
Ah, so the only truly 'unselfish' position is the atheist one, in which we are nothing more than cosmic flukes?
I'll remember that next time I dare to interact with something we all know for sure is designed. Well, computer, I'm sorry to inform you that I am using you for my own personal ego gratification...
quote:
...and displays (or feigns) a shocking lack of familiarity with the history and motives of the Intelligent Design movement.
Utterly irrelevant "guilt by association" argument.
Now what was all that about Uncle Joe again...?
quote:
I haven't read the book...
It shows.
(BTW... I have.)
[ 05. March 2014, 15:13: Message edited by: EtymologicalEvangelical ]
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You can argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome': but you neither can nor need argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome, but I'm not saying this is true'. CS Lewis
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
quote:
Originally posted by Croesos
Lennox seems upset that the Universe is not set up for his personal ego gratification...
Ah, so the only truly 'unselfish' position is the atheist one, in which we are nothing more than cosmic flukes?
I'm not particularly concerned about selfishness or unselfishness, just the idea that the universe must be set up to focus on us. From the preface:
quote:
In any case, how could we be in any sense special since we now know that we inhabit a tiny planet orbiting a fairly undistinguished star far out in an arm of a spiral galaxy containing billions of similar stars, a galaxy that is only one of billions distributed throughout the vastness of space?
The universe does not owe John Lennox a special place or a spotlight, and his apparent preference that it should is not evidence that it does. It seems a fairly blatant case of appealing to consequences rather than constructing an argument.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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Sipech
Shipmate
# 16870
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Posted
Crœsos - that quote you put in looks more like a piece of rhetoric than a crux of an argument. Is it possible that he is here merely posing a question rather than attempting an answer?
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Twitter: http://twitter.com/TheAlethiophile
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by TheAlethiophile:
Crœsos - that quote you put in looks more like a piece of rhetoric than a crux of an argument. Is it possible that he is here merely posing a question rather than attempting an answer?
It's a piece of rhetoric that's there to make an assertion. Namely that we are special, and disciplines like astronomy that don't confirm this belief are therefore suspect.
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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Sipech
Shipmate
# 16870
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Posted
And you know that for sure because you've read the full argument of the book? ![[Paranoid]](graemlins/paranoid.gif)
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I try to be self-deprecating; I'm just not very good at it.
Twitter: http://twitter.com/TheAlethiophile
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EtymologicalEvangelical
Shipmate
# 15091
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Croesos
It's a piece of rhetoric that's there to make an assertion. Namely that we are special, and disciplines like astronomy that don't confirm this belief are therefore suspect.
What utter nonsense.
If you bothered to read the book, I assure you that you will not find ONE comment from John Lennox that even remotely suggests that he thinks the discipline of astronomy is suspect.
Astronomy neither confirms nor denies the value of human life. It is simply concerned to study the cosmos. I would have thought that was obvious.
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You can argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome': but you neither can nor need argue with a man who says, 'Rice is unwholesome, but I'm not saying this is true'. CS Lewis
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
The obvious to me is that this debate is ridiculous.
Science' goal is to explain the workings of the universe.
Religion's goal is to find a meaning.
One v. the other is futile and silly.
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
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Sipech
Shipmate
# 16870
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by lilBuddha:
The obvious to me is that this debate is ridiculous.
Science' goal is to explain the workings of the universe.
Religion's goal is to find a meaning.
One v. the other is futile and silly.
Welcome to Dead Horses!
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I try to be self-deprecating; I'm just not very good at it.
Twitter: http://twitter.com/TheAlethiophile
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Crœsos
Shipmate
# 238
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by EtymologicalEvangelical:
Astronomy neither confirms nor denies the value of human life. It is simply concerned to study the cosmos. I would have thought that was obvious.
I would have thought so too, but certain philosophical types have often argued that because our placement is cosmologically unspecial it necessarily follows that we ourselves cannot be "in any sense special" (to borrow Lennox's phrasing).
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Humani nil a me alienum puto
Posts: 10706 | From: Sardis, Lydia | Registered: May 2001
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lilBuddha
Shipmate
# 14333
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Posted
I think humanity time and again proves itself "special".
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I put on my rockin' shoes in the morning
Hallellou, hallellou
Posts: 17627 | From: the round earth's imagined corners | Registered: Dec 2008
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ken
Ship's Roundhead
# 2460
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
quote:
Originally posted by Tyler Durden:
how do most biologists explain 'macroevolution'?
The same way they explain 'microevolution', the gradual accumulation of variation with external selection pressure favouring some variants over others.
What Alan said.
To go farther you'd need to describe exactly what it is you, or Lennox (who I have never heard of) think needs to be explained. Otherwise the only reply would be a restatement of the usual noddy-level presentation of evolution by natural selection, which I imagine everyone has already seen loads of times.
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Ken
L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle.
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An die Freude
Shipmate
# 14794
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by ken:
quote:
Originally posted by Alan Cresswell:
quote:
Originally posted by Tyler Durden:
how do most biologists explain 'macroevolution'?
The same way they explain 'microevolution', the gradual accumulation of variation with external selection pressure favouring some variants over others.
What Alan said.
To go farther you'd need to describe exactly what it is you, or Lennox (who I have never heard of) think needs to be explained. Otherwise the only reply would be a restatement of the usual noddy-level presentation of evolution by natural selection, which I imagine everyone has already seen loads of times.
Somehow "who I have never heard of" easily takes on the shape of a guilt by association argument. It might be of interest that he's a professor of mathematics and teaches "Science and Religion" at Oxford. It doesn't prove that he's right or that his arguments are good, but I think it leaves a bit of the burden of proof that he'd be entirely scientifically unaware on those making such a statement.
Quetzalcoatl, I'm not personally into this debate itself, more of a meta interest in what it would take to establish basic equippedness for assessing evolutionary rates?
My personal impression of Lennox in this issue is that his credentials are accepted as good enough by Dawkins, which makes me lean towards that they would be acceptable to most. But that's a tangent and I don't know much about the specifics in the thread.
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Walt Whitman
Formerly JFH
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