“The God Hypothesis”

From Keith Ward, Why There Almost Certainly Is a God: Doubting Dawkins (Oxford: Lion, 2008), continuing with a line of thinking that I mentioned in my earlier blog post, “‘Personal Explanation'”:

The God hypothesis, at its simplest, is the hypothesis that personal explanation is not reducible to scientific explanation, and that it is prior to scientific explanation. . . .  Put another way, mind is prior to matter.  Mind causes matter to exist, as a means of bringing into being a set of states that are desired and enjoyed by that mind, or that can be desired and enjoyed by other minds that may form a shared community.  (80)

[I]f the universe is rational, God almost certainly exists.  Far from belief in God being some sort of irrational leap of faith, it is the most rational hypothesis there is; and perhaps it is the only plausible and sure foundation of the rationality of the universe that science presupposes.  (81-82)

It’s not inappropriate, in this context, to think of the doctrine of the divine logos, which is famous, of course, from the opening verses of the Gospel of John but which is also characteristic of John’s rough contemporary, the Jewish Middle Platonist philosopher and biblical commentator Philo of Alexandria (ca. 20 BC to ca. 50 AD).  It is a rich term, meaning not only “word” but “speech,” “discourse,” “proportion,” “reason,” and so forth.

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Inquiring minds want to know:

“How Do We Know Space Is Expanding?”

But some questions remain:

“‘Serious gap’ in cosmic expansion rate hints at new physics”

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Regarding the very ancient story of humans:

“Was the Toba Eruption Not the Volcanic Catastrophe We Thought It Was?”

“Critics attack study that rewrote human arrival in Americas: Mounting scepticism challenges report that put hominins on continent more than 100,000 years earlier than most scientists accept.”

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An interesting suggestion that, thus far at least, is meeting very stiff resistance:

“Did Ancient Greeks Sail to Canada?  Researchers think Plutarch’s De Facie tells the tale of Greek sailors making the treacherous transatlantic crossing. They dug into the science to show how it could have happened.”

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I’m told fairly frequently, especially by anonymous strangers online, that I’m a fundamentalist and a young-earth creationist.  This always surprises me.  And it makes me wonder why I think this article makes a solid point:

“Creationism isn’t about science, it’s about theology (and it’s really bad theology).”