Embedded Files
( - previous issue - / - next issue - )
AR 23:16 - Responding to the rejection of theistic explanations
In this issue:
SCIENCE - a popular response to the idea that "humanism has been seen in some quarters as unfashionable"
+ comprehending "the language in which God has written the universe"
Apologia Report 23:16 (1,382)
May 3, 2018
SCIENCE
Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, by Steven Pinker [1] <www.bit.ly/2KbfVYz> -- Sarah Bakewell's review for the New York Times (Mar 4 '18, p1, 14) is titled "Steven Pinker Continues to See the Glass Half Full" and she begins: "Optimism is not generally thought cool....
"[O]ne might argue (and Steven Pinker does) that the philosophy Voltaire satirizes here is not optimism at all. If you think this world is already as good as it gets, then you just have to accept it. A true optimist would say that, although human life will never be perfect, crucial aspects of it can improve if we work at it, for example by refining building standards and seismological predictions so that fewer people die in earthquakes. It's not 'best,' but it is surely better. ...
"Pinker's follow-up to his 2011 book The Better Angels of Our Nature [2] ... assembled banks of data in support of his argument that human life is becoming, not worse as many seem to feel, but globally safer, healthier, longer, less violent, more prosperous, better educated, more tolerant and more fulfilling. His new book makes the same case with updated statistics, and adds two extra elements. First, it takes into account the recent rise of authoritarian populism, especially in the form of Donald Trump - a development that has led some to feel more despairing than ever. Second, it raises the polemical level with a rousing defense of the four big ideas named in the subtitle: progress, reason, science and humanism - the last being defined not mainly in terms of non-theism (though Pinker argues for that, too), but as 'the goal of maximizing human flourishing - life, health, happiness, freedom, knowledge, love, richness of experience.' Who could be against any of that? Yet humanism has been seen in some quarters as unfashionable, or unachievable, or both. Pinker wants us to take another look. ...
"He later adds that he could have ended every chapter by saying, 'But all this progress is threatened if Donald Trump gets his way.' ...
"This book ... contains something to upset almost everyone. When not attacking the populist right, Pinker lays into leftist intellectuals. He is especially scathing about newspaper editorialists who, in 2016, fell over themselves in their haste to proclaim the death of Enlightenment values and the advent of 'post-truth.' His (rather too broadly painted) targets include humanities professors, postmodernists, the politically correct and anyone who has something nice to say about Friedrich Nietzsche." [It seems to us that last remark means Pinker would choke on many statements by self-help sensation Jordan B. Peterson, who gives Nietzsche splashes of intellectual credit while laying waste to the socialist fruit of his influence. - RP]
In spite of all this, Bakewell finds it "an excellent book, lucidly written, timely, rich in data and eloquent in its championing of a rational humanism that is - it turns out - really quite cool." <www.nyti.ms/2qTphPX>
"A Grand Cosmic Resonance: How the Structure and Comprehensibility of the Universe Reveal a Mindful Maker" by Melissa Cain Travis, assistant professor of apologetics at Houston Baptist University <www.bit.ly/2vIWovy> -- discusses how the "mysterious resonance between the structure of the material world, the abstract world of mathematics, and the human mind - what I call Cosmic Resonance - not only has major implications for the contemporary debate between materialism and theism but also is rooted in some of the earliest thought of the Western tradition" - such as "Galileo's famous statement about mathematics being the language in which God has written the universe."
Her detailed survey of examples begins with Pythagoras of Samos, who influenced Plato. She uses Johannes Kepler as another example, and concludes with Albert Einstein.
Next, Travis reviews the contemporary response to cosmic resonance. "If mathematics did not map onto the material world with such incredible precision and the human intellect was not so well suited for highly complex mathematical reasoning, the scientific advancements of the past several centuries would have been impossible."
She mentions cosmologist Max Tegmark (featured in AR 23:12), who is "convinced that some version of Platonism - a real domain of abstract mathematical objects - is somehow 'out there' and informing the structure of the material world. Tegmark's explanation is quite radical; he claims that the reason mathematics applies so well to the natural world and why we can discern and make sense of these patterns is that the cosmos (human minds included) is the colossal material manifestation of a mathematical entity. He says we are self-aware parts of a giant mathematical object. ...
"British physicist Paul Davies, who seems to ascribe to a pantheistic flavor of agnosticism, is, like Tegmark, convinced that the mathematical structure of nature is discovered, not a fiction imposed upon nature by the human mind. ...
"[A]theist philosopher Thomas Nagel similarly argues that the deeper truths of cosmic reality cannot be explained by mindless physical processes. 'The intelligibility of the world is no accident,' he says.... Rather than espousing a theistic explanation for what we observe, Nagel, like Davies, is convinced that there is some unknown principle at work. ...
"According to Nagel, the currently popular Darwinian approach never will be able to explain this principle of 'natural design,' and thus needs to be revamped. ... Nagel admits that his rejection of theistic explanations of the world are entirely philosophical: 'I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.' ...
"As Oxford mathematician John Lennox has said, it is 'not surprising when the mathematical theories spun by human minds created in the image of God's Mind find ready application in a universe whose architect was that same creative Mind.' ...
"[T]his remarkable human capacity for scientific discovery ultimately requires the insight that our power in this respect is the gift of the universe's Creator who, in that ancient and powerful phrase, has made humanity in the image of God. (Genesis 1:26, 27)." Christian Research Journal, 41:01 - 2018, pp18-25. [5]
If you'd like to read more about the above, chances are real good that early in July you'll find just the thing in a new book by Travis, Science and the Mind of the Maker [3].
And last, regarding the "rejection of theistic explanations" mentioned above, we are reminded of another contemporary response to the evidence of Glory that seems so obvious to those on the grateful side of grace: "In the third verse of Genesis, a serpent appears.... God only knows why He allowed - or placed - such a creature in the garden. I have long puzzled over the meaning of this. ...
"We have seen the enemy, after all, and he is us. The snake inhabits each of our souls. This is the reason, as far as I can tell, for the strange Christian insistence, made most explicit by John Milton, that the snake in the Garden of Eden was also Satan, the Spirit of Evil itself. The importance of this symbolic identification - its staggering brilliance - can hardly be overstated. ... Work beyond comprehension was invested into the idea of Good and Evil, and its surrounding dream-like metaphor." Jordan B. Peterson, 12 Rules for Life (pp46-7) [4]
Our early observation -- the University of Toronto psychology professor confidently based in Freudian psychoanalysis is an agnostic humanist with uniquely pluralistic religious views (controversially favorable toward many of the Bible's great teachings, though hardly in agreement with evangelical soteriology); outspokenly critical of atheism, political correctness, postmodernism, and socialism; the man builds idea alliances as few have before him. <www.jordanbpeterson.com>
-------
SOURCES: Monographs
1 - Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, by Steven Pinker (Viking, 2018, hardcover, 576 pages) <www.amzn.to/2HlZsiw>
2 - The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, by Steven Pinker (Penguin, 2012, paperback, 832 pages) <www.amzn.to/2JkgOwH>
3 - Science and the Mind of the Maker: What the Conversation Between Faith and Science Reveals About God, by Melissa Cain Travis (Harvest House, July 2018, paperback, 224 pages) <www.amzn.to/2qS1NLM>
4 - 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos, by Jordan B. Peterson (Random House, 2018, hardcover, 409 pages) Amazon's "#1 NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER" <www.amzn.to/2K8eWIM>
------
( - previous issue - / - next issue - )
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse