God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?

The following is part of a summary/review that I did recently for a Philosophy course.

In God's Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? John C. Lennox, professor of mathematics & philosophy of science at Oxford University, has written a clear and concise book that answers perhaps one of the most important questions of the modern day, “Has Science Buried God?” Lennox holds nothing back in answering and tackling the common arguments against God the Creator, which are led by the so-called New Atheists of the day with the likes of Richard Dawkins and Peter Akins. Lennox demonstrates the commonly found flaws in atheistic arguments against theism; and at the same time provides reason, evidence, and arguments for theism.

Lennox brings out that the argument is not so much science versus religion as is commonly thought, but that it really comes down to differing world views. There are those that hold to naturalism and those holding to theism. In his expertise, Lennox does a careful examination of science and shows how consistent science is within a theistic world.

In the preface of the book Lennox distinguishes that he is not arguing so much for what is known as intelligent design, but rather that he is arguing for intelligent causation, that there is scientific evidence for design. He goes on to not only show that there is reason to believe so, but that there is also reason to believe that there is one behind the design that science has observed, God the Creator. Lennox also distinguishes that there is a huge difference between some scientists being at war with God and science itself. The conclusion he draws out of this is that individual scientists such as Dawkins do not represent science as a whole.

Lennox shows that science not only fits within a theistic world, but that it even shows that there is a purpose behind creation. Although science can point to an ultimate purpose behind things, Lennox points out that science stops there because it cannot tell us the purpose. In other words, science is unable to answer the existential questions of life. Lennox shows that science in this way is limited because it only reveals what may have happened.

In the latter part of the book, Lennox examines where macroevolution deflates under careful examination, which cannot explain the origin of information in a DNA code. Dawkins and those like him believe that introducing God in the DNA conversation would mean an end to science. Lennox, a man of science himself proves the illogical thinking behind this as all living organisms are made up of DNA and that there has to be some form of intelligence behind all coding, theists call this something God.

In conclusion, Lennox asserts that there are only two presuppositions for all people. “Either human intelligence owes its origin to mindless matter; or there is a Creator.” In the end, he shows that science has not buried God, but rather that science ultimately points to the existence of God and is itself validated by God’s existence.