Lennox, John C., 2019- Cosmic Chemistry

“Question A. Does science - its history, presuppositions, and findings - provide evidence of a designing intelligence involved in the universe and life? rather than: Question B. What is the nature of that designing intelligence, if it exists? Differentiating between these two questions has been the intellectual motivation behind the Intelligent Design (ID) movement.”

“At the heart of all science lies the conviction that the universe is orderly. Without this deep conviction science would not be possible.”

“Design arguments come in two main forms. Firstly, the argument to design where the idea is that, if we believe in a Creator for whatever reason, then we would expect to find evidence of that fact in the physical world. [...] The argument from design moves in the opposite direction, in taking perceived design in the universe as evidence of the existence of God.”

“Suppose we scientists are given a black box to investigate. Is it legitimate for us to ask and investigate whether there is any scientific evidence for an informational input into the design and function of the box? [...] I then said that this question is the key to understanding ID.”

“[T]hat certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected natural process.”

“[S]cientific reasoning can also deal with unrepeatable events via inference to the best explanation and this too can lead to well-confirmed hypotheses, if there is good evidence. [...] While subjective judgments can come into play, the crucial thing is the quality of the evidence in a given case.”

“For, the statement that only science can lead to truth is not itself deduced from science. It is not a scientific statement but rather a statement about science, that is, it is a meta-scientific statement. Therefore, if scientism’s basic principle is true, the statement expressing scientism must be false. Scientism refutes itself.”

“[T]here is nothing but nature. It is a closed system of cause and effect. There is no realm of the transcendent or supernatural. There is no “outside”. Diametrically opposed [...] is the theistic view [...] [that] the universe is not a closed system but a creation, an artefact designed and produced by the mind of God.”

“The danger of terms such as “methodological atheism” or “methodological naturalism” is that they might be understood as lending support to an atheistic worldview [...]. [...] What no scientists can avoid is having their own a priori philosophical commitments. Those commitments [...] may well play a much more dominant role when we are studying how things came to exist.”

“The building does not emerge from the bricks nor the writing from the paper and ink without the injection of both energy and intelligent activity.”

“God is not to be understood merely as a God of the gaps since he is not an alternative to science as an explanation. On the contrary, he is the ground of all explanation. It is his existence which gives rise to the very possibility of explanation, scientific or otherwise.”

“[T]he remarkable picture that is gradually emerging from modern physics and cosmology is one of a universe whose fundamental forces are amazingly, intricately, and delicately balanced or “fine-tuned” in order for the universe to be able to sustain life. [...] Change any of them a little, and the universe would become hostile to life and incapable of supporting it.”

“[T]he preceding arguments are not “god of the gaps” arguments; it is advance in science, not ignorance of science, that has revealed the fine-tuning. There is no “gap” in the science. The question is rather: How should we interpret the science?”

“[P]roteins are [...] like the DNA used in their construction, information rich. It is that informational structure that so far has presented an insuperable barrier to scientific explanation. [...] Evolution in the Darwinian sense is a non-starter here, since it makes no sense to try to explain the origin of life in terms of something (natural selection and mutation) whose functioning self-evidently depends on life’s prior existence.”

“[T]he coding [organisms] contain, their capacity to use programmed information, etc. is piling up evidence that there is a mind behind life [...]. It is, after all, a plain fact that the only known source of information of the type we have been studying is mind.”

“For you, DNA exhibits precisely the same kind of specified complexity that characterizes natural languages since the order of the letters in a gene specifies the order of the sequence of amino acids in the protein.”

“We therefore clearly need to be cautious in what we claim since such inferences do not belong to the realm of mathematical science but of informed beliefs, and we are dealing with just one specific sequence.”

“No one is in a position to claim as a scientifically established fact that life could or could not have originated through natural processes. We can say that science has revealed the central role played by information in living organisms and that it has failed to give any plausible, let alone convincing, explanation of the origin of that information.”

“The point is that reductionism, though part of the story, from which a great deal has been learned, is far from being the whole story.”

“[T]he existence of complex specified (language-like) information that is found in the genetic structure of all living things provides a formidable challenge to the notion that unguided natural processes can account for life. It makes scientifically plausible the suggestion that an intelligent source was ultimately responsible for life’s origin.”

“There is a strong case that science and God together form a rational conjunctive explanation. The notion that they are alternative conflicting explanations stems from failure to distinguish between different kinds of explanation - mechanism and agency.”

“Its rational intelligibility [...] points towards the existence of a Mind that was responsible both for the universe and for our minds. [...] [I]f we believe on other grounds that there is a Mind behind the universe [...] then we might well expect to find that the universe is rationally intelligible, that it is fine-tuned for life, that life is based on information, etc. Since that is what we have found, it strengthens the evidence [...] by a process of cumulative evidence.”

“It would therefore be a serious logical error only to look within the ingredients of the universe - its material, structures, and processes - in order to find out what its purpose is [...]. The ultimate answer, if there is one, will have to come from outside the universe [...]. [...] It would therefore be very surprising if the Mind from which we are derived should be any less capable of self-expression and communication than we are.”

“It is the product of a Mind - the divine Logos. What lies behind the universe is much more than a rational principle. It is God, the Creator himself. It is no abstraction, or even impersonal force, that lies behind the universe. God, the Creator, is a person. And just as Aunt Matilda is not part of her cake, neither is God part of the universe.”