Customer Reviews

God: The Evidence: The Reconciliation of Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

This is the story of Patrick Glynn's journey from a believer to an agnostic and then back to a believer. From the time of Copernicus to Galileo to Darwin and beyond, science has continuously raised questions about ideas of belief and then answered the questions in a manner that does not require religious belief. Religion has taken a beating more and more at the anvil of science. The problem is that science and religion have always treated each other as being mutually exclusive. You believe in one or the other.

While this book does not prove God exists, it does a very good job of showing that science and religion do not have to be at opposite ends. Science has advanced over the last 25 years to the point where the best explanations for some things are that a guiding hand has been at work. The position that if you believe in science then you cannot believe in God is shown to be untenable. This does not prove that God exists, only that there is no real obstacle standing between science and belief in God. Not an argument for a particular religion or a particular God, it points out that belief in a guiding intellect that pervades the universe is a tenable position and also the position most consistent with the current state of science.

Patrick Glynn's "God: The Evidence" is a well-written and balanced book overall. It should not bore the reader and its style quite readable and well-tempered (not too academic, lest less technical readers get lost, not too simplified, lest scientists and philosophers lose patience). It really has something for anyone interested in God, science, philosophy, etc.

Ultimately, I think his analysis is correct that unlike the 1970s, where it seemed to many that scientific discoveries precluded the existence of God, today (late 1990s and now early 2000), scientific discoveries tend to be more congenial to God's existence. As a Ph.D. candidate in philosophy, I affirm his view that the materialism/mechanism of the 19th century is failing to account for many phenomena. He also had some good points about the prejudice of some scientists, in just simply dismissing Aristotle's notion of final cause, page 54, (its like saying, "I just don't like it"). When one considers much of the evidence regarding the "anthropic principle" in cosmology, it does seem as if the universe is hot-wired for life (no accident). But of course you have to decide for yourself, and Glynn does give many opposing arguments, which is nice.

So should you buy this book to prove something to yourself?

As a teacher of philosophy, I have learned that in order to prove or disprove anything to anyone at least two criteria are necessary:

(1) He/she has an open mind about the issue (no predetermined conclusions, such as some atheists and believers have) (2) There must be a starting point for the knowledge to flow from (if someone is a pure skeptic and the two of you cannot agree on a single thing like "we both know trees exist, right?", then the whole idea of proof or refutation is hopeless).

Of course extremists on both sides (fanatical bible waving literalists, and hardcore atheists will not in the least be open to this book, since they have all the answers already how could a book do anything to them?)

Ultimately, Glynn says that he does not think reason/science can give you faith, and he is correct. But it can, to echo the words of Aquinas centuries ago, remove barriers to one embracing God.

So if this topic interests you and you have a desire to integrate science/philosophy/theology, etc., Glynn's book will generally not disappoint (though you will want to read much more . . .)

Hopefully, one day books like this will not be necessary, when humankind grows up spiritually. That is, when it sees all humans as spiritual brothers/sisters, ends the killing of each other over money, power, and religion, and realizes that God exists, loves us all, and is the one we seek in our hearts . . . but that will take time. Perhaps some believers will have to work as hard as the atheists to overcome their hard hearts; for some cling to an idolatrous god who damns people for not being Christian . . . others hate the idea of a creator and sacrifice/responsibility for others.).

Glynn's easy to read book will allow individuals to gain a sense of openness about questioning the existence of god. While he clearly does not reconcile "Faith and Reason in a Postsecular World" (as purposed by the kicker on the cover), he does provide an excellent overview of five areas that deserve the every man's consideration.

For those of us that have grown up in a world where science proved that god is no longer necessary and therefore dead, Glynn offers words of doubt. However, these words of doubt are now attacking the hypothesis that science could ever hope to prove that there is no creator.

Glynn starts the book with the most compelling of the five areas: A Not So Random Universe. While some will fault his casual handling of the anthropic principle, with no clear background on strong or weak anthropic rationales, he does do an adequate job of describing the difficult underpinnings of physics in today's world. Particularly powerful is his crisp description of Hawkings, et al, who tries to hang onto a godless universe by creating theorems that might continue to lock out the concept of an intelligent creator. Unfortunately, these desperate theorists place faith in concepts that can not be proven.

The other areas of the book start to probe on softer areas, but these areas are still worth examining. However, most of these areas are soft not because of Glynn's poor treatment of these areas, but because much of science behind near death experience and/or psychology has been weak.

While Glynn does close with an appeal to live a life with deistic driven principles, he does leave a void. If there is a god, why can't you call him on a telephone? Why is the act of faith necessary? Why can't you prove god?

And the problem of evil remains.

So Glynn should have concluded his book, not with a pat encouragemenet to believe in god, but an encouragement to try and find out the answers to these questions.

Glynn gives us an overview of the emerging scientific evidence of intelligent design in the universe. This book is aimed at intellectuals and those that style themselves as such. Glynn does not try to prove that there is a God, his major point is that there is no longer any compelling reason to believe that science and reason stand in the way of belief in God. Few if any of Glynn's ideas are original, but he provides a highly readable and inspirational synthesis. He says certain things well that it's time for somebody to say well. The sterile, quirky, spiritually dead philosophies that so oppressed me in college require only a gentle shove by Glynn to smash their dry, brittle, bones. Glynn does not provide enough documentation for some, but I have read enough of the background material to know that Glynn has mastered the main thrust. I'm not sure if I buy the near-death material, and Glynn has left out important new evidence in micro-biology that would buttress his case, but in the main, BRAVO! This book will no doubt come under intense attack by the last of the "science is all" high priests, as the fading flame of their power and influence flickers out.

This is a very good and swift read. Patrick Glynn takes the reader on a fast-paced voyage through five areas where secular research has unintentionally stumbled into nagging questions on the existence of God.
He begins with the anthropic principle in the physical science realm, which points out the coincidental universe in not likely to be coincidental. (Stephen Hawking made a career out of fighting the anthropic principle. Unfortunately, his solution is mathematically brilliant but founded upon a reverse leap of faith that is equally as fantastic and dogmatic as the idea of God.) Patrick moves swiftly on to statistical data from mental health practice which shows that the spritually connected wind up better off in the mental health arena. Patrick follows this up with news from the more concrete world of medicine, where several studies published in medical journals have conluded that meditative states and prayer directed toward God positively correlate with faster recoveries from injury and illness and better general health. He then goes back in time and sumarizes the core findings on the Near Death Experience made by the original research teams in the early 1970s prior to the entry of the subject into the popular arena. Finally, Patrick goes through an overview of how secular philosophy is turning itself reluctantly back from the "God is Dead" world of the early 20th Century to the conlusion that God is making come-back in the 21st. This is a wide field, and Patrick's purpose seems to be to get you thinking along one or more of these lines and let you follow up. It will definitely punch the "hot button", as evidenced by the angry reviews on this page. Contrary to some assertions, the book is well researched and documented. And it does not "prove" that God is there. It simply shows the proverbial smoking gun and asks you if you think it fired itself... or did someone or something pull the trigger?

This book is alternately inspiring and frustrating, and ironically works best when you give up the idea that the author is going to do what he set out to do.

Perhaps the overall problem is that Glynn purports to offer scientific evidence that God MUST exist (or at least probably does), while in reality, he merely refutes hard-core atheists who say that God CANNOT exist. Which, if you're not in that camp, isn't all that compelling.

And it's questionable how well he does even that. Chapter One is devoted to the logically useless claim that because the universe as we know it is highly improbable, some intelligent being must have made it. Which is kind of like saying that if you put on a blindfold and walk 100 miles, and end up in Pittsburgh, then every step you took along the way must have been designed to bring you to Pittsburgh. (He later mentions, in passing, that scientists don't buy this because it's teleological -- without defending it or justifying himself in any way!) In the same chapter, his supposed deconstruction of the well-known "monkeys typing Shakespeare" idea is rife with maddening fallacies, inconsistencies, and subtle but deadly conceptual flip-flops.

Chapters 2 and 3, about the mental and physical health benefits of faith, are presented well enough and based on, as far as I know, reasonably compelling data. But, as some readers suggest, there are cause-and-effect questions that are never addressed, and even if faith directly benefits health, that has nothing to do with the actual existence of God, so I frankly don't know why he wrote these chapters.

The much maligned near-death-experiences chapter is perhaps the most interesting, if only because it tells some fascinating stories that, if true, cannot be explained by known physiological processes. Of course, this doesn't mean they aren't caused by natural phenomena which we don't understand yet. This is a consistent flaw in the book's outlook. Glynn constantly puts admittedly intriguing phenomena to the test of "Can science explain it?" If not, Glynn implies, it must be God's work. Little attention is paid to the possibility that there are natural processes which we are not yet, and may never be, capable of comprehending. This may partially be the fault of hardcore atheist-scientists who have incurred his gentle wrath.

Still, by this point I wasn't thinking much about that anymore. What Glynn does well is write cogent, genuine, forward-thinking reflections on faith. The message of his last two chapters emphasizes the common bond of all religions, the need to dispense with hypocrisy and tribalism, and the rewards of spiritual peace. If he could stick to that, and get out of the science business, we might be getting somewhere.

Overall, it was interesting to read about this perspective on religion, one that I am not certain gives "evidence" for God's existence, but certainly some points to think about. One thing I noticed from his introduction on why he was a non-believer was that he didn't seem genuine or sincere. He never gave much, if any information on his "atheism" days. For instance, this quote from page 5, "The embrace of atheism did not bring joy. Somewhere, despite my "agnosticism," I had clung to the hope that I might be proven wrong." For him, it may not have brought him joy. That is a personal effect that he felt. I, on the other hand, felt the opposite. Instead, I felt free. As I know a very large number of people also feel. So, unfortunately right off the bat he lost that connection with me since it didn't seem like he ever really dug into why he didn't believe. Throughout the book he never mentions to bring that up again.

I noticed the author's negative attitude towards non-believers, skeptics and even, in some cases, scientists. If had he truly understood what non-believers other than him really thought or did his homework on outside opinions, it may have been different. He seems to make false claims and, more importantly, assumptions when speaking about scientist's views and perspectives on life. Then, there was A LOT of pages concerning near death experiences, which I found to be interesting to read about but frustrating when he tried to somehow use a tiny majority's vision of a bright light or some figure as being proof of God. It's just tough to say his evidence is valid when so many of the main points he is trying to make are drowned out or dragged on. Overall, he didn't dig down into the questions I would have liked him to write about. Nice try, though.

Dr. Glynn is a philosopher who has been active as a politician, journalist and TV commentator. He is currently associate director and scholar at a political institute in Washington. Like many other young Christians, Glynn lost his faith during his university studies, and even became a staunch atheist and postmodern thinker. However, after many years of atheism and nihilism, Glynn found some scientific evidence that brought him back to the Faith. Glynn's evolution is strikingly similar to C. S. Lewis's, who was raised a Christian, became atheist at the university and uncovered at a later stage in his life some evidence that lead to his conversion. In this breath-taking book, Glynn recount his spiritual journey. With philosophical, scientific and historical insights, he shares the evidence that convinced him. He covers different fields: the design of the universe, the correlation between traditional religion and psychic and physical health, the near-death experiences and the moral bankruptcy of atheism. His book has received praise of Sir John M. Templeton, who is well known to ASA members, and also of personalities such as Michael Novak, Hans Küng and George Weigel. I highly recommend it to those interested in apologetics, or in matters of faith and reason. This book may also be a formidable weapon for those interested in spiritual warfare: I cannot think of a better initial evangelistic gift for agnostics, atheists, nihilists or for those who are indifferent to religious questions. This book is not however a systematic presentation of arguments and counter-arguments, but is rather an excellent "mind- opener" that should be followed by the systematic apologetics works of Norman Geisler, Richard Swinburne, J. P. Moreland and William Craig.

This is a very poorly-argued defense of Christian theism, but it does serve to illustrate some popular thinking in Christian circles.

Glynn's opening argument is based on Aristotle's "Final Cause" as a way of inferring design or intent. In his own words:

Yes, in a sense you could say that the anthropic principle
"explained" all those coincidences, but it was a very unscientific
sort of explanation. It was, in essence, a "teleological"
explanation -- the kind of explanation that the old natural
philosophers used to offer for things, before modern science came
along. . . Aristotle thought it was a sufficient explantion of
something to say that its end or goal caused it. He called this the
"final cause." (31-32)

Modern science is not interested in the final cause. It looks
rather for the efficient cause, the mechanism that actually brings
things about. The anthropic principle harks back to the older style
of thinking. In effect, the anthropic principle says that humanity
is (apparently) the final cause of the universe. The most basic
explanation of the universe is that it seems to be a process
orchestrated to achieve the end or goal of creating human beings.
This explanation is not a scientific explanation in the modern sense
of the term. (32)


What Glynn is saying here is that the end result of any process is the reason that whole process even exists. If the physical laws and constants of the universe dictate the form which our mortal frames take, according to Glynn, then those forms must have been expressly intended by someone or something which established the specific physical laws and constants. This is Glynn's assumption: that form and function can only originate in intelligent intent.


This assumption is amply evidenced in the language Glynn uses for expressing the anthropic principle. Consider some of these loaded statements from the book:

Too many values [of physics] had seemingly been arranged around the
central task of producing us. (25)

The . . . evolution of the universe had apparently been directed
toward one goal: the creation of human life. (25)

. . . a universe with a definite beginning, expressly designed for
life. (26)

Even such basics of life as carbon and water depend on uncanny
"fine-tuning" at the subatomic level . . . (29)

The fine-tuning of seemingly heterogeneous values and ratios
necessary to get from the big bang to life as we know it
involves intricate coordination over vast differences in scale . . .
(31)

How does one explain that the laws of physics fit so perfectly with
the fifteen-billion-year project of creating life? (43)

This depth of this assumption is subtly revealed in a section of the first chapter entitled "Monkey Business" which I initially thought was a mistake. I was ready to interpret this mistake as a sign of Glynn's mathematical inadequacies until it struck me that its truthfulness hinged on the very assumption intrinsic to the rest of his argumentation. To quote him verbatim:

In its generic form, the idea that randomness, over time, will
eventually produce order has a very old pedigree, long predating
modern science. . . The modern version of the argument often takes
the form of an analogy . . . : Given infinite time, a monkey with a
typewriter would eventually type the works of Shakespeare. (44)

The point is that it does not matter of there is an infinity of
days. Each morning, the situation, and the problem, is the same.
Where is the agency that would provide the order required for even a
day's worth of typing of Shakespeare, let alone the complete works?
. . . (to put the proposition mathematically, the probability on any
given day that the monkey will type the works of Shakespeare -- or
anything equivalently meaningful, extensive, and ordered -- is not
one in some very, very large number; it is zero). Randomness does
not engender order on any appreciable scale, no matter how many
billions of years or opportunities you give it. (46)

Glynn's conclusion, taken at face value, is patently false. Any string of characters, no matter how long, how extensive, how ordered, or how "meaningful," has a finite (limited) probability of being typed by random chance. It may take a very, very long time to actually type it all out, given the astronomical odds, but given a truly infinite number of chances it becomes not merely a possibility, but a certainty. A monkey typing for an infinite length of time will not only (necessarily) produce the entire works of William Shakespeare, but also of Charles Darwin, Bertrand Russell, Mark Twain, John Calvin, and even Patrick Glynn. In summary, it would take a peculiar kind of order for the monkey NOT to hammer out all the works of Shakespeare, given infinite time! This is no conjecture: it is a mathematical certainty.

Why, then, would Glynn say something so wrong? At first, I thought he was merely mathematically ignorant, but then it occurred to me that he isn't really arguing for the impossibility of order, despite his verbiage: what he's really arguing for was the impossibility of purpose or of intent from randomness. Glynn -- like many religious people -- sees order and purpose as one and the same. Without purpose or intent, according to his assumption, there cannot be order. Therefore, since a randomly-typing monkey would obviously) have no purpose or intent to type anything ordered, Glynn concludes that it could never produce order, no matter how long it typed.

There is a very simple reason why modern science does not look for final cause: as was proven in the monkey "thought-experiment," it does not necessarily exist. Only in cases where order arises from intelligent intent does final cause exist. The biological principle of natural selection, proven factual beyond any shadow of doubt, shows how very specific structure and function can arise with no "master plan" guiding it at all. The unthinking pragmatism of reproductive genetics assures that those traits in existence which are advantageous to reproduction in any given environment will rise in statistical occurrence over time. Final cause is not the "obvious implication" of order (page 50) that Glynn maintains.

The flawed "Final Cause" mindset is not the only problem I see with this book, but it is perhaps the most significant. All in all, I consider this book a series of very sloppy arguments for Christian theism, and hardly the reconciliation of faith and reason it purports to be.

This book does well at surveying the changes in thinking that have reopened the question of God's existence. The author does especially well in his discussion of the anthropic principle-that the fundamental constants of the universe can only support life within a very narrow range and that of all of the possible values of those constants, only the life supporting ones have occurred. Those who object that this is meaningless because, "well, if it didn't support life, we would not be here to think about it" are missing the point. The miracle is not that man can think about his existence; the miracle is that he exists-and could only exist if the unverse were extremely fine tuned to a degree that just does not seem possible by chance alone. It is not a question of perception, as the reviewer below has stated, but of existence. I think the author does a very good job of showing how meaningful this is and how silly those sound who try to get out of the obvious conclusion. Having been around atheists all of my life, I can assure you that they are some of the most dogmatic people around and hide their own unscientific thinking and dogmatism behind a transparent and artful appeal to a type of argument that is dishonest. Less successful, I think, is the author's discussion of near death experiences. Since so many NDE's take on the characteristics of the individual's particular religion, it is difficult for me to see how there is anything objective about NDE's. They seem to be a very subjective experience. I liked this book and recommend it as one of the better books on this subject out there. The author also show how morally bankrupt any attempt to develop a set of ethics is without some transcendent values. Let's face it, any thorough and consistent materialistic viewpoint is bound to lead to moral nihilisim sooner or later.