Home > Author > John C. Lennox
21 " Johannes Kepler described his motivation thus: ‘The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order which has been imposed on it by God, and which he revealed to us in the language of mathematics. "
― John C. Lennox , God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?
22 " We are a product of quantum fluctuations in the very early universe. "
― John C. Lennox , God and Stephen Hawking: Whose Design Is It Anyway?
23 " The very success of science in showing us how deeply ordered the natural world is provides strong grounds for believing that there is an even deeper cause for that order. "
24 " Just because a religion has supported science does not prove that the religion is true. Quite so – and the same can, of course, be said of atheism. "
25 " Far from science abolishing God, it would seem that there is a substantial case for asserting that it is the existence of a Creator that gives to science its fundamental intellectual justification. "
26 " The very success of science in showing us how deeply ordered the natural world is provides strong grounds for believing that there is an even deeper cause for that order.’ Swinburne is using inference to the best explanation and saying that God is the best explanation for the explanatory power of science. "
27 " blind faith’ turns out, therefore, to be the exact opposite of the biblical one. "
28 " Former Director of Kew Gardens, Sir Ghillean Prance FRS, gives equally clear expression to his faith: ‘For many years I have believed that God is the great designer behind all nature… All my studies in science since then have confirmed my faith. I regard the Bible as my principal source of authority. "
29 " Furthermore, if Dawkins’s question is valid, it can be turned back on him. He believes that the universe created him. Therefore, we are justified in asking him: who created your creator? "
― John C. Lennox , Seven Days That Divide The World: The Beginning According To Genesis & Science
30 " Hawking’s inadequate view of God could well be linked with his attitude to philosophy in general. He writes: “Philosophy is dead.”9 But this itself is a philosophical statement. It is manifestly not a statement of science. Therefore, because it says that philosophy is dead, it contradicts itself. It is a classic example of logical incoherence. Not only that: Hawking’s book, insofar as it is interpreting and applying science to ultimate questions like the existence of God, is a book about metaphysics — philosophy par excellence. "
― John C. Lennox , Gunning for God: A Critique of the New Atheism
31 " The ancient world knew as well as we do the law of nature that dead bodies do not get up out of graves. Christianity won its way by dint of the sheer weight of evidence that one man had actually risen from the dead. "
32 " Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing, one with the very delicate balance needed to provide exactly the right conditions required to permit life, and one which has an underlying (one might say ‘supernatural’) plan.’ Arno Penzias, Physics Nobel Prize-winner "
33 " The fact that we understand some of the mechanisms of the working of the universe or of living systems does not preclude the existence of a designer, any more than the possession of insight into the processes by which a watch has been put together, however automatic these processes may appear, implies there can be no watchmaker.’39 "
34 " The existence of laws of physics... strongly implies that there is a God who formulates such laws and ensures that the physical realm conforms to them. "
35 " when we see some examples of a mechanism… do we doubt that it is the creation of a conscious intelligence? So when we see the movement of the heavenly bodies… how can we doubt that these too are not only the works of reason but of a reason which is perfect and divine? "
36 " Large evolutionary innovations are not well understood. None has ever been observed, and we have no idea whether any may be in progress. There is no good fossil record of any.’23 "
37 " the laws of nature are written by the hand of God in the language of mathematics’ and that the ‘human mind is a work of God and one of the most excellent’. "
38 " So, is naturalism actually demanded by science? Or is it just conceivable that naturalism is a philosophy that is brought to science, more than something that is entailed by science? Could it even be, dare one ask, more like an expression of faith, akin to religious faith? One might at least be forgiven for thinking that from the way in which those who dare ask such questions are sometimes treated. Like religious heretics of a former age they may suffer a form of martyrdom by the cutting off of their grants. "
39 " The example of the jet engine can help us to clear up another confusion. Science, according to many scientists, concentrates essentially on material causation. It asks the “how” questions: how does the jet engine work? It also asks the “why” question regarding function: why is this pipe here? But it does not ask the “why” question of purpose: why was the jet engine built? What is important here is that Sir Frank Whittle does not appear in the scientific account. To quote Laplace, the scientific account has “no need of that hypothesis”.29 Clearly, however, it would be ridiculous to deduce from this that Whittle did not exist. He is the answer to the question: why does the jet engine exist in the first place? "
40 " If life is the result of a purely naturalistic process, what then of morality? Has it, too, evolved? And if so, of what significance are our concepts of right and wrong, justice and truth? "