God Chance and Necessity [Paperback]

Keith Ward (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1996

This work challenges the assumptions made by so many than religion and scientific belief are incompatible, exposing a number of fallacies through a carefully argued refutation of scientific atheism.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

That all of life is a wondrous accident, a fantastic conglomeration of chance happenings subject to the whimsy of natural selection, is particularly troubling to Oxford don and Anglican priest Ward (Religion and Creation, Oxford Univ., 1996). A blind and purposeless universe denies the existence of God?the very thing Ward strenuously argues for in his latest work. Taking on scientific materialism in general and the theories of two Oxford scientists in particular (biologist Richard Dawkins and chemist Peter Atkins), Ward methodically challenges their atheistic hypotheses point for point, arriving finally at the affirmation of a purposeful creator God, although one not given to overruling the laws of nature and, therefore, one who allows suffering. Quite a few notches above the creationist fight, Ward's work requires familiarity with the philosophical and scientific arguments involved to comprehend adequately the issues raised. Intellectual, detached, and deliberate in tone, this will appeal only to specialists in the area.?Sandra Collins, Pittsburgh Theological Seminary Lib.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

With his famous remark that God was not a necessary hypothesis, the nineteenth-century astronomer Laplace anticipated the views of many of the most prominent scientists of our own time. But distinguished theologian Ward finds in God the only possible guarantor of intellectual coherence. Hence, he believes, scientists who follow Laplace into godless theories are soon entangled in self-contradictions. Ward deftly exposes these self-contradictions as he demonstrates that human consciousness, freedom, and morality could never have originated in merely accidental natural phenomena but must have derived from divine purpose. Hardly a fundamentalist defending a literal interpretation of Genesis, Ward evinces a sophisticated understanding of modern cosmological and evolutionary theories. But he finds these theories rational and meaningful only when interpreted within a divinely governed cosmos. A rare synthesis of intellect and conviction, this book offers valuable insights to readers struggling to reconcile faith and science. Bryce Christensen

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Product Details

• Paperback: 212 pages
• Publisher: Oneworld (November 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1851681167
• ISBN-13: 978-1851681167
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,020,948 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Good Review of Issues, December 23, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: God Chance and Necessity (Paperback)

Ward does not go about trying to construct a proof of God in any traditional sense. Instead he looks at the epistemological and ontological positions of the debate. The question of the existence of God relates to the presuppositions a person brings to the question. Nothing better exemplifies that fact than two of the other reviews which apparently read very different books than I did. Despite one reviewer's assertion that this is nothing but warmed up old apologetics and another's that Ward doesn't answer arguments against his positions, neither statement is accurate.

What Ward makes clear is that reductionism as a necessary methodological strategy in science (we must break down complex systems into smaller, simpler observable parts in order to discern how they function) does not mean that reductionism is necessarily an appropriate metaphysical principle. In the case of Dawkins, Ward argues that human beings are very much more than "gene machines". Ward basically illustrates that reductionism as a metaphysical approach is incapable of explaining or understanding the full panoply of human behavior and experience. Simply put, reductionism is insufficient to describe things that are of importance to human beings.

This is not an argument against evolution, which Ward accepts as good science. It is an argument against the polemical assertion that the chance nature of mutation in DNA makes life purposeless as Dawkins asserts. Certainly, if you are a theist, there is no reason to presuppose that God does not create in the universe through the process of evolution. Ward posits chance and necessity as part of a creative dynamic imbued into matter, through which the universe can come into being. Simply because chance plays a role does not mean that there is no meaning. In fact, Dawkins often characterizes himself as a warm, funny person who is not heartless or uncaring, but at the same time postulates a universe that is uncaring and without meaning. Therein lies the tension. To espouse as a metaphysical principle there is no meaning to the universe or us and our hopes and dreams (as Bertrand Russell did before), but to act as if there is.

Ultimately, the final contradiction for the materialist comes in the denial of free will. A reductionist, like Dawkins, has to admit that there is no such thing as free will according to his metaphysical and epistemological approach of reductionism. Dawkins has stated that free will is illusory. Yet, he fills a lot of books and research papers writing as if he has access to a free will that allows him to discern what is true not only about evolution but the ultimate nature of reality. This, of course, is the ultimate failure of reductionism, to argue that there is no such thing as truth, because we are all the results of mechanical processes -- either Laplace's particles in motion, or Dawkins' gene machines. Yet, everything about our everyday lives say that this is not the case. That is the central issue in Ward's book -- the interpretation of chance and necessity in the real world. The metaphysical reductionist is forced into self-contradictory statements -- e.g., I can prove that we don't have free will -- whereas the theist can make statements about the nature of reality that explain a much wider gamut of human experience.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Theism explains a purposeful meaningful universe and US., March 20, 2003

By 

R. M. Williams "just an avid reader" (tucson, arizona USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: God Chance and Necessity (Paperback)

3 star book with 5 star bibliography and intentions.

First, it is a difficult read, deeply philosophic and challenging. I found myself often re-reading and re-analyzing sections. Second, builds up slowly, reaches a peak in chapter 8 with "Brains and Consciousness" although it continues for 2 more rather redundant chapters, despite being a short book of 200 pages.

It is fundamentally a reply to two books: Peter Atkins _Creation Revisited_ and Richard Dawkins _Blind Watchmaker_, first half of the book directed towards Atkins, latter half is contra Dawkins.

The major theme is straightforward:
1-theism is a good explanation of the purpose, function, teleology of the universe as we see it, despite evolutionary denial of purpose in the universe.
2-theism is better than materialism as an explanation for the evolution of life, in particular for the evolution of us: thinking, conscious, believing, moral, responsible.
3-theism is a good answer for conscious of humans, materialism undermines consciousness by making it a random occurence without necessary justification other than the usual evolutionary natural selection mechanism for the differential survival of the survivors.

From the first page:
"To the majority of those who have reflected deeply and written about the origin and nature of the universe, it has seemed that it points beyond itself to a source which is non-physical and of great intelligence and power."
To the last: "but, of course, really to believe in God is to have some experience of a being of transcendent power and value which is life-enhancing and value-transforming, and to trust the testimony of at least some of those who claim such experience to a pre-eminent degree."
the book is written by a deeply thinking, deeply feeling Theistic Christian, who makes no apologies for his faith, but justifies it in logical, reasonable ways. But i see nothing in the book that will convince a naturalistic, materialistic atheist. Maybe such proofs exist, i don't know, but i do know they aren't in this book, despite the author's intentions and best attempt to present them. At best the arguments are carefully reasoned essays that point beyond themselves to the underlying ideas and books for further study on the readers part. Preliminary, exploratory, good beginnings, not final, or conclusive or something to grab and put into someone's hand, unfortunately.

But that said, the author puts his finger on a critical issue, that materialists like Atkins and Dawkins refuse to admit. Chapter 8, pg 147, "The mystery is how it comes about that the construction of brains, of complicated collections of purely physical particles, gives rise to something apparently non-physical: thoughts, feelings, dreams, images and intentions.' That materialist with a purely randomness underlying evolution end up denying the purposefulness of their own brains, of their own actions. This chapter is the key one in the book, the moral arguments that follow in the next two chapters are basically repetitions of the same ideas in different domains. His arguments are basically sound and derived from Scriptural foundations, yet for some reason the arguments do not appear to deflect the critical judgements of materialism in a significant way. But rather seem more like broad statements than actual 'battle-tested' formulations directed at the metaphysics of materialism. However i believe that the author has insights that i would like to follow up and i will read another newer book to see if he engages stronger, with more details than does this one.

Worth the time, if you are philosophically inclined. Not a book to recommend lightly to anyone, the topic is important and i will continue to look at this author and like books. Not to be discouraged, it is not a simple nor straightforward issue, this collision of two competing world and life views: modern evolutionary materialistic naturalistic atheism and traditional Scriptural Theistic Christianity.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well, get it back IN stock ;-)., November 30, 1999

By 

John S. Ryan "Scott Ryan" (Cuyahoga Falls, OH) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: God Chance and Necessity (Paperback)

"The publisher is out of stock," reads the sad little note at the top of this page. That's a shame, because every reader of Richard Dawkins's _The Blind Watchmaker_ ought to read this trenchant reply.

Ward also takes on a few other thinkers (e.g. Peter Atkins) but most of his fire is concentrated on Dawkins. Ward is pretty generous with Dawkins (repeatedly, for example, complimenting him on his writing style) and is certainly no enemy of evolutionary theory. But Ward rightly notes that Dawkins pretty much hasn't got a clue what religion and religious philosophy are about, seems to be hostile to both, and in fact provides evidence himself that the emergence of life via evolutionary processes should be seen as the result of intelligent design (to borrow a useful term from William Dembski).

Warning: not _all_ of Ward's arguments are sound. (At one point, for example, he argues that because there are so many more possible _complex_ explanations than _simple_ ones, the probability of a complex explanation far outweighs that of a simple one and therefore God is a more probable explanation than anything simpler. This isn't correct; the probability of a _particular_ complex explanation is smaller than the probability of just _any_ old complex explanation.)

But many, even most, of his critiques hit their targets. Hey, publisher -- can we get this item back in stock, please?