***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\nJohn Charlton Polkinghorne, KBE (Knight of the British Empire), FRS (Fellow of the Royal Society), who died in 2021 at the age of ninety, was a professor of mathematical physics at the University of Cambridge until he resigned his professorial chair to study for the priesthood, becoming an ordained Anglican priest in 1982. \u00a0Thereupon, he served as the president of Queens\u2019 College, Cambridge, from 1988 until 1996.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
The following notes are drawn from his 1996 Terry Lectures, delivered at Yale University and published as John Polkinghorne, Belief in God in an Age of Science<\/i> (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1998):<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe world is not full of items stamped \u2018made by God\u2019 \u2014 the Creator is more subtle than that \u2014 but there are two locations where general hints of the divine presence might be expected to be seen most clearly. \u00a0One is the vast cosmos itself, with its fifteen-billion-year history of evolving development following the big bang. \u00a0The other is the \u2018thinking reed\u2019 of humanity, so insignificant in physical scale but, as Pascal said, superior to all the stars because it alone knows them and itself. \u00a0The universe and the means by which that universe has come marvelously self-aware \u2014 these are the centres of our enquiry.\u201d \u00a0(1-2)<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThose who work in fundamental physics encounter a world whose large-scale structure (as described by cosmology) and small-scale process (as described by quantum theory) are alike characterised by a wonderful order that is expressible in concise and elegant mathematical terms. \u00a0The distinguished theoretical physicist Paul Dirac, who was not a conventionally religious man, was once asked what was his fundamental belief. \u00a0He strode to a blackboard and wrote that the laws of nature should be expressed in beautiful equations. \u00a0It was a fitting affirmation by one whose fundamental discoveries had all come from his dedicated pursuit of mathematical beauty. \u00a0The use of abstract mathematics as a technique of physical discovery points to a very deep fact about the nature of the universe that we inhabit, and to the remarkable conformity of our human minds to its patterning. \u00a0We live in a world whose physical fabric is endowed with transparent rational beauty.<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n\u201cAttempts have been made to explain away this fact. \u00a0No one would deny, of course, that evolutionary necessity will have moulded our ability for thinking in ways that will ensure its adequacy for understanding the world around us, at least to the extent that is demanded by pressures for survival. \u00a0Yet our surplus intellectual capacity, enabling us to comprehend the microworld of quarks and gluons and the macro world of big bang cosmology, is on such a scale that it beggars belief that this is simply a fortunate by-product of the struggle for life. \u00a0Remember that Sherlock Holmes told a shocked Dr. Watson that he didn\u2019t care whether the Earth went round the Sun or vice versa, for it had no relevance to the pursuits of his daily life.\u201d \u00a0(2-3)<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Polkinghorne is not at all sympathetic to notions that mathematics is merely a rather arbitrary human invention. \u00a0It works too well in such fields as physics. \u00a0And, anyway,<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe sense of discovery, to which the mathematicians testify, encourages the belief that there is a realm of reality in which entities like the Mandelbrot set exist everlastingly.\u201d \u00a0(xiii)<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
To make his point, he tells the story of Albert Einstein\u2019s development of the theory of general relativity through mathematical reasoning, and of his delight \u2014 perhaps the strongest emotional experience in Einstein\u2019s life \u2014 when he found that it accounted for a discrepancy regarding the planet Mercury that, under Newtonian physics, had baffled astronomers for more than six decades. \u00a0Nature, Einstein felt, \u201chad spoken to him.\u201d \u00a0(3-4)<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no a priori reason why beautiful equations should prove to be the clue to understanding nature; why fundamental physics should be possible; why our minds should have such ready access to the deep structure of the universe. \u00a0It is a contingent fact that this is true of us and of our world, but it does not seem sufficient simply to regard it as a happy accident. \u00a0Surely it is a significant insight into the nature of reality.\u201d \u00a0(4)<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe that Dirac and Einstein, in making their great discoveries, were participating in an encounter with the divine.\u201d \u00a0(4)<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe \u2018unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics\u2019 in uncovering the structure of the physical world (to use Eugene Wigner\u2019s pregnant phrase) is a hint of the presence of the Creator.\u201d \u00a0(4)<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
But only a hint. \u00a0An indicator for those with eyes to see. \u00a0Not a coercive and inescapable proof.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI do not present this conclusion as a logical demonstration \u2014 we are in the realm of metaphysical discourse where such certainty is not available either to believer or to unbeliever \u2014 but I do present it as a coherent and intellectually satisfying understanding.\u201d \u00a0(4-5)<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dr. Polkinghorne regards \u201cnatural theology\u201d \u2014 the attempt to discern the existence and perhaps some of the character of God from nature rather than from special revelation, as \u201can insightful, rather than logically demonstrative, discipline\u201d (xi) \u00a0Nevertheless, he openly states his \u201cconviction that theism offers the \u2018best explanation\u2019 of the many-levelled character of human encounter with reality\u201d (xii) and that \u201cthere is a Mind and a Purpose behind the history of the universe\u201d (1). \u00a0\u201cI believe,\u201d he says, \u201cthat the rational beauty of the cosmos indeed reflects the Mind that holds it in being.\u201d \u00a0(4)<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
As I\u2019ve complained here before, the Christopher Hitchens Memorial \u201cHow Religion Poisons Everything\u201d File<\/em>\u00a9 is in serious danger of overflowing.\u00a0 So I\u2019m attempting to relieve the pressure here by releasing yet another shocking item from it:<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Church of Jesus Christ Gives US$4 Million to Help Refugees in Europe: The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the World Food Programme are using the money immediately for core relief item\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
Posted from St. George, Utah<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 *** \u00a0 Interpreter Radio Show \u2014 February 13, 2022 In the first hour of the 13 February 2022 episode of the Interpreter Radio Show, Terry Hutchinson and John Gee discussed a new book on the 1920 edition of the Book of Mormon as well as the Interpreter Foundation\u2019s recent Ultimate Egypt tour. You […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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