[HT] John Lennox vierailee Suomessa

John Lennox (Kuva Wikimedia)

Eero mainitsi, että John Lennox on kutsuttu puhujaksi Kansanlähetysopiston apologiafoorumiin 25-27.4 2014 Ryttylään. Yritetään nyt yhdessä hieman tutustua mieheen edeltäkäsin.

John Carson Lennox on matematiikan professori  Oxfordin yliopistossa ja matematiikan ja tieteenfilosofian luennoitsija Green Templeton Collegessa Oxfordissa.  Hän kansainvälisesti tunnettu puhuja tieteen, filosofian ja uskon suhteista ja kristillisen uskon puolustaja.  Hän on mm. käynyt kaksi väittelyä professori Richard Dawkinsin kanssa. Hänellä on myös omat nettisivut, joilla on paljon materiaalia.






Googlailun perusteella alkoi muodostua käsitys, että Lennox ei ole  teistisen evoluution kannattaja, mutta ei myöskään nuoren maapallon kreationisti. Jossain vilahti silmiini, että hän olisi hyvin arvostettu 'Old Earth Creationism' kantaa edustavien joukossa. Hänen suhteestaan ID-liikkeeseen en päässyt oikein selville, saattaa ajatustensa puolesta tulla joissain asioissa lähelle sitä.  Yhdistävänä tekijänä on ainakin tietty kriittisyys evoluutioteoriaa kohtaan.

Seuraavat sitaatit ovat hänen kirjastaan "Seven Days That Divide the World".

• I think that sometimes people have been taught there are only two possibilities: Possibility one is that if you are being faithful to Scripture, you have to be a young earth creationist. Otherwise you’re an evolutionist or a theistic evolutionist, and you’re not faithful to Scripture. I don’t think that is the case
• It’s not a quest of trying to keep up [with science], but it’s a quest of looking at what God has revealed of Himself in nature, and looking at what God has revealed of Himself in the Bible and trying to make sense of those two.
• There is a way of understanding Genesis 1 that does not compromise the authority and primacy of Scripture and that, at the same time, takes into account our increased knowledge of the universe, as Scripture itself suggests we should (Rom. 1:19-20).
• ...there is another possibility: that the writer did not intend us to think of the first six days as days of a single earth week, but rather as a sequence of six creation days; that is, days of normal length (with evenings and mornings as the text says) in which God acted to create something new, but days that might well have been separated by long periods of time.
• The biological theory of evolution demands an ancient earth, and for many people this is a major factor in their thinking.  However, the cosmological evidence is independent of biology, and it is therefore perfectly possible to accept that cosmological evidence without committing oneself to the belief that life has arisen by an unguided materialistic evolutionary process.
• We must beware of tying our exposition of Scripture so close to science that the former falls if the latter changes.  On the other hand, we would be very unwise to ignore science through obscurantism or fear, and present to the world an image of Christianity that is anti-intellectual.
• Just as it was no shame or compromise in the past for people to change their minds over the motion of the earth, so it is no shame or compromise today for people to change their minds about the age of the earth.
• Genesis challenges atheism’s fundamental assertion that human life has appeared without the activity of God’s mind, so that there is nothing special about human beings.
• Genesis seems to go out of its way to imply a direct special creation [to make man], rather than suggesting that humans arose, either by natural processes or … out of preexisting hominids.

Edellämainituista satunnaisista sitaateista ei vielä saa välttämättä oikeaa kuvaa, mutta löysin myös linkin hänen toiseen kirjaansa "God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?"  Se on kokonaisena luettavissa tuossa osoitteessa.  Pitääpä koittaa löytää aikaa senkin lukemiseen... Yhden sitaatin voin silti jo laittaa:

• Certainly the mutation selection mechanism accounts for much of the variation that Darwin and we observe, but its range is circumscribed. There would appear to be an edge to evolution, a limit to what a blind watchmaker can do. (p.121)

Laitetaan tähän vielä youtube-linkki Lennoxin ja Dawkinsin debattiin: