Science Hasn't Buried God, Not Even the Way of Viewing God that Lennox Would Admit as Buried

Has science buried God?
Biblical Bookworm, VIENNA, 9.VI.2024
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCWSB4XKuqE

In this video I summarize and review the book "God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?" by Prof. John Lennox. …

Now for my responses:

I'll surely see Veritasium's video, but I think Gödel might be wrong, i e he's thinkig what he does, because he includes in "ordinary arithmetic" things that don't really belong there, like "number line" and "real numbers" and "zero" ... part of which are algebra, i e convience of statement over truth of statement, part of which are more properly geometry.

5:00 Is there such a thing as "the God of the gaps fallacy"?

Aristotle wrote a book called "De fallaciis" in Latin (peri tois sophismasin?) and I'm pretty sure "God of the gaps" is not enumerated there.

The idea was invented by Nietzsche, and given its name by a Scottish Free Church pastor who was fanatical for introducing Evolution belief. It was an angry remark against Creationists, not a serious analysis of logic.

(Peri ta sophismata, can you have accusative after "peri"?)

(Wait, no, it's genitive, peri tôn sophismatoon*).

5:19 "the cause of time was timeless, the cause of matter was immaterial"

If time and matter were the uncaused cause?

I think Geocentrism as understood by St. Thomas works better.

• 1) If God himself physically turns the universe around us each day, it means He is almighty, if it's just each heavenly body that turns around us each day, it means He commands them;
  
  
• 2) either way He commands them and orders them,
  
  
• so that 3) this works together for our physical good, we get seasons, days and nights, tides, both ebb and high tide, and despite very complex movements, the heavenly bodies do not separate from their habitual positions, with whatever latitude that means, the order does not fall into chaos.

6:01 We can put a car together and we can demantle it, and the same with its engine.

Both Ford and God have meant for cars to work without the need of constantly referring to them while driving.

There is a big difference with the universe.

The universe is not a thing we drive. Even the weather is not a thing we drive. Even the possibility of lightning rods and of spraying some metal on clouds to provoke rain does not make all or even most of the weather a thing we can drive or run. Let alone the universe.

No man has stopped the weather or the universe, started to screw things apart, and then built it back up again and set it going again. Excluding God from turning the universe around us each sideral day, or angels from for instance turning the Sun around the Zodiac each year or the Moon around the Zodiac each sideral month (but a synodic month is really not exactly the same, since the same angle to the Sun has to be reached and one month later the Sun has moved its angle by a twelfth of a circle).

The supposed fact that Heliocentrism can be explained without God or lightnings without demons dashing through the storm does not prove those explanations correct or if partly correct (for the latter), does not prove them complete.

The historic premise behind "God of the gaps" charge is "we now know better than to believe spirits throw lightnings or God turns the heavens around us" ... but in fact we don't.

If you wanted to see a car produced, you might visit the factory, and you would probably find a real Mr. Ford (or successor) in control over actions taken there.

The universe is so to speak God's factory, where He produces angelic beings in the heavens, and uses earth as a crucible for trees, furry animals, and this hybrid being between matter and spirit called "man" ... it makes sense if God does not intend us to run the Sun, and it makes sense if, this being so, God is more hands on with the Sun than with fossil fuels.

8:22 Riccioli differed from Kepler.

Riccioli thought the processes one could colloquially term "celestial mechanics" are unknowable by observation (or calculations from such), but knowable through theological deduction, i e he opted for angelic movers.

CSL famously had a nostalgia for the Medieval world view in which these exist and also work that way.

This explanation has never been disproven, never even proven superfluous (Laplace offered very little in minute calculations of stability of the solar system, and Chinese who have caught up consider "it's dependent on initial conditions and possible several different ways" ... in the sense of many possibilities leading to the dissolution of the solar system). The angelic movers, and even their necessity have never been disproven.

10:11 As a Mathematician, he may be aware of the impossibilities in evolving a new cell type or a new functional gene.

A process never observed, by the way.

10:56 While his arguments don't depend on Evolution being wrong, it is.

Imagine a certain cell type depended on a very short protein with only TWO amino acids. Each is coded by three base pairs. The two amino acids came to be what they were because one locus changed, changed for instance tryptamid** to whatever one locus change can change tryptamine** to.

In that case, one could imagine the other protein happened to be already expressable, and one fluke change took from tryptamine to the right protein.

Now imagine the gene actually depended on THREE amino acids, nine loci. A bit less probable that one mutation made it.

A bit less probable still, when we come to FOUR amino acids. Proteins are often hundreds of amino acids long and on top of that, one cell type may depend on more than one gene.

In fact, blind ciclids from a cave in Mexico have retinas that nearly completely develop, there are ten genes involved in gestation, to make rods and staffs work, two of the genes are damaged, and the whole ceases to work, while draining energy (the retina development still goes on, still requires blood flow, the retinas require blood flow etc).

You would need hundreds of mutations coming in the right order, before the last one brought about a state of affairs which natural selection could favour. All previous steps, it would have disfavoured, since they would drain energy without providing benefit.

* If you want to know my trick or why I am so sure, the book title "Perihermeneias" brought me on the track. It's really "peri hermeneias," and "hermeneias" is genitive of "hermeneia" ... similarily, it could well be "peri sophismatoon" without any article ...

** While tryptamine is the correct form, I was probably thinking of Tryptophan.