Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

New atheist Sam Harris explains why he thinks but little of old-fashioned theistic evolutionist John Polkinghorne

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The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values New atheist and PhD neuroscientist Sam Harris on theistic evolutionist John Polkinghorne:

… here is Polkinghorne describing the physics of the coming resurrection of the dead:

If we regard human beings as psychosomatic unities, as I believe both the Bible and contemporary experience of the intimate connection between mind and brain encourage us to do, then the soul will have to be understood in an Aristotelian sense as the “form,” or information-bearing pattern, of the body. Though this pattern is dissolved at death it seems perfectly rational to believe that it will be remembered by God and reconstituted in a divine act of resurrection. The “matter” of the world to come, which will be the carrier of the reembodiment, will be the transformed matter of the present universe, itself redeemed by God beyond its cosmic death. The resurrected universe is not a second attempt by the Creator to produce a world ex nihilo but it is the transmutation of the present world in an act of new creation ex vetere. God will then truly be “all in all” (1Cor.15:28) in a totally sacramental universe whose divine infused “matter” will be delivered from the transience and decay inherent in the present physical process. Such mysterious and exciting beliefs depend for their motivation not only on the faithfulness of God, but also on Christ’s resurrection, understood as the seminal event from which the new creation grows, and indeed also on the detail of the empty tomb, with its implication that the Lord’s risen and glorified body is the transmutation of his dead body, just as the world to come will be the transformation of this present mortal world. [Polkinghorne JC (2003) Belief in God in an age of science. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. pp. 22-23]

These beliefs are, indeed, “mysterious and exciting.” As it happens, Polkinghorne is also a scientist. The problem, however, is that it is impossible to differentiate his writing on religion—which now fills an entire shelf of books—from an extraordinarily patient Sokal-style hoax.[5] If one intended to embarrass the religious establishment with carefully constructed nonsense, this is exactly the sort of pseudo-science, pseudo-scholarship, and pseudo-reasoning one would employ. Unfortunately, I see no reason to doubt Polkinghorne’s sincerity. – The Moral Landscape, pp. 166-67

To some, the puzzling part is why a guy who would spend all this time verifying a distinctively Christian doctrine thinks that Darwin was right and life forms do not really show evidence of design (“The basic problem with ID is that God is never spoken of as a “designer” in the Bible: He is Creator and Father and a Father does not “design” his children.”).

Yes, the guy is confused. For one thing, there is a name for parents who don’t “design” their children: irresponsible.  Kids are nt born with a “How to behave” module.

Christian Darwinism is bad for your brain.

Comments
If one intended to embarrass the religious establishment with carefully constructed nonsense, this is exactly the sort of pseudo-science, pseudo-scholarship, and pseudo-reasoning one would employ. - Harris Projection at it's finest?QuestionMark
June 26, 2011
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I have most and maybe even all of Polkinghorne's books. They are not all on religion and they don't take up a full shelf.Mung
June 26, 2011
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