Present Books To God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?

Original Title:	God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?
ISBN:	0745953034 (ISBN13: 9780745953038)
Edition Language:	English
Characters:	Richard Dawkins

God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? Paperback | Pages: 192 pages

Explanation In Pursuance Of Books God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?

I've dreaded reviewing this book, as it's the type of polarizing work that yields predictable reactions: most believers are going to love it, and most non-believers are going to... not love it. It is not the sort of work that leads to conversions on either side - rather, it's written as an apologetic tract to bolster Christians with arguments to debate atheists, or to simply feel confident ignoring atheists. As a former Christian who has been an atheist for 12 years, I am not the target audience. At the same time, I regularly read apologetic works because I am interested in considering the arguments and hope to run across some new and thought-provoking ideas. Also, this book was recommended by a respected friend.

John C. Lennox is an Oxford Mathematics professor who also holds degrees in Philosophy and Bioethics, so he seems a good candidate to talk about whether or not science has "buried God". He has debated the Oxford biologist (and prominent atheist) Richard Dawkins, and Dawkins is clearly the central figure upon which Lennox builds his arguments. In a book just over 200 pages, a search yields 170 mentions of Dawkins. I waited until after reading the book to watch their debate (of the same title), which sums up most of the talking points of the book (but allows Dawkins to respond to the points): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0UIb.... Suffice it to say, Lennox clearly bears an unrequited fascination with Dawkins, and this book could better be called "Au Contraire, Richard Dawkins!"

One of his first arguments is that many respected scientists believe in God. Lennox spends a lot of time pointing out all the usual suspects (Francis Collins, John Polkinghorne, et al.). One could write a much longer book filled only with the names of scientists who don't share Lennox's belief, but certainly the point is taken that you can do good science and also believe in God. Or aliens, for that matter. Lennox also triumphantly points to the religious belief of classical scientists like Newton and Galileo... products of a time where there was no real precedent for unbelief. More irritating, Lennox quote-mines prominent scientists (Hawking is a frequent target) to make it seem as if they truly agree with the Christian perspective, despite their public stances. Another tact is to regularly quote fringe figures as having important voices in the debate who really do not, without giving any sense of their marginal status (Michael Behe, Hugh Ross, William Dembski, Guillermo Gonzalez, David Berlinski, Antony Flew, and even Fred Hoyle come to mind). All in all, there is a fixation on authority and name-dropping that one simply doesn't see in books on the other side of the debate.

He also focuses on the definition of science, protesting that "supernatural" explanations have been defined out of the enterprise a priori. However, Lennox never names one testable claim that hasn't been given due attention from the scientific community. It's not that scientists aren't open to evidence of the supernatural, it's just that those phenomena don't tend to be measurable or repeatable, let alone falsifiable. It has been tried. There's been plenty of research about the effectiveness of prayer, for example (turns out, it doesn't do anything). I'd be really curious to hear about an avenue of research that could be followed to explore supernatural hypotheses, and I'm sure the scientific community would be all ears, too. In the meantime, buddy, stop whining about being excluded.

Lennox insists the universe needs a creator, but wriggles out of the question of where God came from by saying God is not the sort of thing that is created. (Ta-da!!) He spends a lot of time talking about the precise tuning of the physical constants that led to life (that only exists, as far as we know, on one infinitesimal pale blue dot) and the amazing odds of those constants being calibrated as they are. Lots of, "the odds of this happening are one in one hundred billion, billion" statements. He doesn't like being accused of making God of the Gaps arguments, and tries to differentiate "good gaps" from "bad gaps". If anyone can explain the distinction better than he can, please let me know. He moves on to the watchmaker argument, and tries to point to reasonable inferences of design (the Ford analogy is oft-repeated and excruciating).

Here he wanders into the subject of biology (and information theory), and does a really dishonest job of misrepresenting Dawkins' arguments. For example, Lennox dissects the analogy of monkeys on typewriters producing Shakespeare ad nauseam, refusing to understand the point of the analogy. Of course Dawkins is not saying that the biological equivalent of the phrase "methinks it is like a weasel" is already out there, waiting to match specific gene sequences. That would indeed be absurd. That's why it's a metaphor. Rather, Dawkins is describing how certain random mutations are beneficial and sustained by successive generations, leading to cumulative adaptation. Lennox absolutely refuses to grasp this concept, and endlessly attacks the literal understanding of a metaphor about monkeys on typewriters. Elsewhere, Lennox quotes Dawkins's bold concluding sentence (made after a chapter's worth of supporting explanation) without context. He then accuses Dawkins of jumping to conclusions. I'd be curious to know what Lennox thinks was happening for 3.5 billion years of evolution. Apparently he agrees on the timeline, but doesn't feel it was sufficiently long for natural selection to do its thing. In which case... I might wonder why God sat around staring at single-celled organisms for 3 billion years.

I would have called that the most embarrassing part of the book, except that Lennox then abandons any pretext of neutrality and goes straight into talking about the resurrection of Jesus and the importance of the Bible. He also defends miracles, saying that of course they're extremely rare and impossible to prove... otherwise they wouldn't be miracles! (Ta-da!!)

I highlighted many passages that I felt to be misleading, but to respond to them in any kind of detail would make this an unbearably long review, so I shall resist the urge to expound any further. I'll just sum up by saying that Lennox is clearly a clever fellow - he is quite adept at spinning an argument to make a weakness in his own position sound like an advantage. It's an impressive display of mental gymnastics - something an intelligent person can accomplish when he's already got a conclusion fixed in his mind. At best, he is simply unaware of the process. At worst, this is pious fraud. Either way, it is geared toward inoculating believers against challenging ideas before those ideas have a chance to be presented fairly.

Itemize Containing Books God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?

Title	:	God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?
Author	:	John C. Lennox
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	Anniversary Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 192 pages
Published	:	August 20th 2007 by Lion Hudson (first published October 1st 2002)
Categories	:	Science. Religion. Nonfiction. Philosophy. Christian. Theology. Christianity

Rating Containing Books God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?

Ratings: 4.28 From 1353 Users | 146 Reviews

Comment On Containing Books God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?

Just when I thought it safe to relinquish my agnosticism and declare myself an atheist, I have been challenged deeply by this book.Lennox presents the evidence from the cosmos and from the biosphere to show how science reveals the stunning improbabilities of 1. a stable universe that could support life and 2. the emergence of life from purely mindless physical elements. As a mathematician, he analyses the information in DNA, leaving me struggling to keep up, but forced to acknowledge that

Brilliant book on various philosophical and scientific apologetic ideas. The last paragraph of the book sums its central argument up so well: "...far from science having buried God, not only do the results of science point towards his existence, but the scientific enterprise itself is validated by his existence. Inevitably, of course, not only those of us who do science, but all of us, have to choose THE PRESUPPOSITION WITH WHICH WE START. There are not many options - essentially just two.

I decided to read Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion and John Lennox's God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? after listening to part of their debate (found at http://www.dawkinslennoxdebate.com/) on the radio while running errands one weekend morning.Overall, I was underwhelmed by both books, but I'll discuss each individually.The God Delusion (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/74...)Dawkins spends the first half of the book making his case against the existence of God. Throughout this

The book had very good chapters and very bad chapters, hence the 3 stars. This book for the most part is a slow read. It is written from a monotheistic perspective and presented some thought provoking examples to support his view. The bible does come up in the book but is definitely NOT the dominant theme of the book......... the book's focus from my viewpoint and to use some of the author words ...... did matter come before mind or mind before matter?

In this book, John Lennox (updating an earlier work) attempts to address the age-old question of how one can honestly hold a serious religious belief in the age of modern science. Lennox starts out by discussing the scope and limits of science, including the limits of reductionism. This is followed by a discussion of some intriguing developments in cosmology, which may suggest that ours is a "designer universe". Lennox then addresses that old bugaboo evolution. He first treads a number of

I've dreaded reviewing this book, as it's the type of polarizing work that yields predictable reactions: most believers are going to love it, and most non-believers are going to... not love it. It is not the sort of work that leads to conversions on either side - rather, it's written as an apologetic tract to bolster Christians with arguments to debate atheists, or to simply feel confident ignoring atheists. As a former Christian who has been an atheist for 12 years, I am not the target

Oh how I enjoyed this book. John Lennox is such a great philosopher and scientist. He does more than his due diligence in constructing his arguments for the idea that science has not only been powerless to do away with God, it has only done more to demonstrate that God does indeed exist and was instrumental in creating the cosmos, life, and everything else that is. I'm dumbstruck when I see some of the faith-based statements of some hard line New Athiests that they seem to take as axiomatic when