The tutor does his best to be fair to all opinions.

1. The tutor does his best to be fair to all opinions. • However in the interests of honesty he may explain what he believes is true. • Although the tutor has his own opinions, (the assessment of essays will not be affected by a student's own different opinions.) • Knowledge of the subject and good argument are all important for assessment. • Holding the same beliefs as, or different beliefs from, the tutor will not be relevant for assessment of essays.

2. Christianity, Philosophy and Science. God. The Soul, Life, The Atom, The Universe.

3. Physical Matter (the material) is studied by science. • Physical matter is everything we can see, hear, touch or smell. • Even very small things like the cells of our bodies which can be seen through a microscope are physical matter. • Or very large things like stars & galaxies. • Or very complicated things like the human brain. • The spiritual = the soul (or perhaps God) is not studied by science.

4. World Views. • Materialism: • Only the material exists. Therefore science can tell us everything that is real. • The Soul is nothing. • Idealism:Only the spiritual (our souls) really exist. • The physical world is our imagination or dream. • Dualism: • Both exist and are fundamental and affect one another. • Many theists are dualists, but not all. (not all theories about body and soul are dualist) • If dualism is right, can the soul survive the death of the body or does it depend on having a new heavenly body? My hands, my happiness and my thoughts.

5. Worldviews (cont), Science and Philosophy.Under each of these headings there are many sub sections not mentioned here. • The material universe is an illusion or a dream. Only the spirit or mind is real. (Some versions of Eastern Religions are Idealism.) • Now the opposite view: • The material universe is all that there is – the whole story. (Materialism.) • Combining them together: • Both the material and the spiritual are real, basic (dualism) and interact. However the spiritual may give rise to the material world. (Theism.) With which worldview does science and philosophy fit most comfortably?

6. World Views: Materialism. Francis Crick: “You, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more that the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules.”(The Astonishing Hypothesis page 3)

7. The most beautiful and deepest experience a man can have is the sense of the mysterious. It is the underlying principle of religion as well as of all serious endeavour in art and in science.... He who never had this experience seems to me, if not dead, then at least blind. The sense that behind anything that can be experienced there is a something that our mind cannot grasp and whose beauty and sublimity reaches us only indirectly and as feeble reflection, this is religiousness. In this sense I am religious. To me it suffices to wonder at these secrets and to attempt humbly to grasp with my mind a mere image of the lofty structure of all that there is. Albert Einstein (Speech in Berlin, Germany 1932).

8. A Common Mistake. • Because science studies physical matter religious belief is only about the ‘spiritual’ in humans and God. • Wrong! • If God exists He is relevant to all things – spiritual and physical. • If God exists He created the material, physical world – not just the spiritual world. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (The first words of the Bible). “And God made ‘man’ in His own image.” (Near the beginning of the Bible) “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” (John 1)

9. Brain - Mind - Consciousness - Soul. • The Brain - extremely complex. • Prof. Ambrose (Emeritus Professor of Biology in London University) in his book 'The Nature and Origin of the Biological World' page 152 , describing the complexity of the brain says that it is like 500 million telephone exchanges all connected properly. The connections possible are 101,300,000,000,000. (To write this number out in the normal form l,000,000 . . . etc. would take about one hundred thousand years to do.)

10. Could a brain scientist of the future know ‘you’ or ‘me’ by examining our brains? • Our thoughts? • Not the results of our thinking, but our actual thoughts? (Leibniz’s argument.) • What you and I see when we look at something red. • Not the results of red light on the brain, but the actual experience of that colour? • Could he know my experience of ‘me’ as ‘I’? • Could he know what it feels like to be a cat, a snail etc? • If the answer to these questions is ‘no’ then science can examine the brain but not our thoughts (the mind). • Therefore brain and mind are not the same (not identical).

11. Physical forces just exist. They are not true or false. It does not make sense to ask whether they are true or false. Thoughts can be true or false. Therefore thoughts are not merely physical forces. They interact with the physical. They are the main reason for decisions about the physical. We can’t understand the physical by itself. Thoughts, decisions and intentions are basic to human history. If we imagine a world of mere matter, there would be no room for falsehood in such a world, and although it would contain what may be called ‘facts’, it would not contain any truths, in the sense in which truths are things of the same kind as falsehoods. In fact, truth and falsehood are properties of beliefs and statements: hence a world of mere matter, since it would contain no beliefs or statements, would also contain no truth or falsehood.[1][1]Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy, page 70.

12. If we imagine a world of mere matter, there would be no room for falsehood in such a world, and although it would contain what may be called ‘facts’, it would not contain any truths, in the sense in which truths are things of the same kind as falsehoods. In fact, truth and falsehood are properties of beliefs and statements: hence a world of mere matter, since it would contain no beliefs or statements, would also contain no truth or falsehood. (Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy, page 70.)

13. Participants and speakers at the ‘Out of Body’ - ‘Near Death Experience’ (NDE) lecture: • David Lorimer, Scientific and Medical Network; • Dr Olaf Blanke, Dept. of Neurosurgery, University Hospitals of Geneva and Lausanne; • Dr Pim van Lommel, Consultant Cardiologist, Rijnstate Hospital, Arnhem, Netherlands; • Dr Peter Fenwick, Institute of Psychiatry, University of London; • Professor Bob Morris, Koestler Chair of Parapsychology, University of Edinburgh. • For more on the scientific research see: ‘The Lancet’December 15th 2001.

14. Interesting results of research reported at the April 2003 Edinburgh Science Festival. NDEs are reported by 18% of resuscitated patients (a very much higher proportion for children) often involving: • Seeing the old body from above and watching the medics at work. • One example given was of seeing way beyond the hospital to distant places where the mind focussed. • Many of such things seen produced verifiable knowledge. • A review of earlier life including childhood. • Travelling down a tunnel to a beautiful light where deceased family members and religious figures are there to welcome. • An awesome experience of peace, unconditional love, beauty and freedom. • Finally seeing a ‘border’ beyond which there will be no return. • Not all experience all of these phases. Many return to their body after the first one or two stages.

15. Attempts have been made to explain these experiences from the consequences of the body closing down and starving the brain of oxygen. It is alleged that this lack of oxygen would produce illusions including an illusion of light. • However those addressing the Science Festival said this could not provide an explanation because: • The experiences happened when the brain had become completely inactive (no electrical activity at all). • The reported sensory experiences (visible, audible and tangible) were clear and coherent and could not come from a failing brain. • What was seen of the hospital room (and beyond) was verified as true. • People born blind who had never seen anything report seeing clearly as the experience progresses!

16. In answer to questions afterwards we were told: Previous culture or religious practice are not relevant to the experience/non-experience of NDE. • There was no statistical difference between reports from religious former West Germany or from non-religious former East Germany. • Types of illness/accident, or drugs used in treatment, are not relevant to the experience/non-experience of NDE. • NDEs usually (but not always) lead to: • belief in the after life;transformed attitudes to other people;a belief in purpose for life on earth;a loss of fear of death. • The religious content experienced does not always correspond with the person’s previous religious beliefs.

17. Two days after attending the presentation I received this message from a friend in Malawi (who did not know about the lecture I had attended). It is about a former Moslem. I quote it verbatim: “He is a man who used to be a Moslem but is now a Christian. His testimony was unusual to say the least. He had a ‘near-death’ experience (some describe it as a ‘post-death’ experience!) and during that time, although he was a follower of Allah he heard God saying to him that ‘Jehovah is the true God and Jesus Christ is His Son’. He recovered to life, found himself clear of the disease that he had had, and became a Christian. He says that his Christian faith has brought him liberation and a joy unimaginable beforehand.”

18. After the meeting the two of the presenters told me: Typically the person feels that his/her new life is (a) embodiedAND ALSO (b) clothed. • The clothes are not those worn in the hospital bed, but clothes associated with life when he/she was in the prime of life. • My comments: • The NT teaching on the nature of resurrection is that the resurrected self is not a disembodied soul but an embodied self - in a transformed ‘spiritual body’. • Jesus left the grave clothes behind but did not appear naked to Mary Magdalene. • The day after the presentation was Easter Day but, not surprisingly, the presenters did not mention this.

19. Near death experiences almost always convince those who experience them that God exists. • There are some known exceptions e.g.: • A.J.Ayer, during his middle years was one of the most famous 20th century atheist philosophers. • But late in life, he had a `near death’ experience. • In his article `What I saw when I was dead’, he wrote: "The only memory that I have of an experience, closely encompassing my death, is very vivid. I was confronted by a red light, exceedingly bright, and also very painful even when I turned away from it. I was aware that this light was responsible for the government of the universe .."

20. What kind of response and evaluation of his experience did A. J. Ayer make? "My recent experiences have slightly weakened my conviction that my genuine death, which is due fairly soon, will be the end of me, though I continue to hope that it will be. They have not weakened my conviction that there is no god."

21. Animal and human consciousness - the differences? • Higher animals are conscious but not self-conscious? • They don’t think universally or abstractly. • They don’t ponder their own existence? • Language and signals. • Human personhood dependent on interpersonal relationships. - Ultimately the relationship with the Person of God? • Dark side of human self-awareness. • Contemplating pain and death. • Self-worship - the foundation of human sin.

22. A Word from the Bible: 1 Cor 2:11. 11 For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him? In the same way no-one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.

23. Fundamental to Christianity is that, not only does God know us from the outside looking in, but also - through Christ who became one with us - He knows us from the inside looking out. He is thus the Redeemer of the whole person - body and soul.

24. Now to life and evolution. • The Mystery of the Origin of Life. • (Biological evolution can only get going once life has begun to exist). • A common theory: • In the early earth there was a ‘cosmic soup’ of gases and liquids. • Electricity from lightening produced, in the cosmic soup, amino acids - the building blocks of life. • This can be replicated in the laboratory today.

25. How did life originate? (Cont) • However it is one thing to know how stones (say) were formed but another to know how an intricate stone palace was built from the stones. • Energy and an mind are needed to work on the stone. • Simple proteins involve many amino acids in correct sequence. • How are proteins actually made? • In the cells of life. • In each cell of life there is a chemical factory (cytoplasm) for making the proteins, a computer program (the DNA) and a translation system (the RNA)

26. Cytoplasm for making proteins. It receives its instructions from the DNA via the RNA translation system. RNA Nucleus of cell made up of DNA

27. Professor Francis Crick, who received the Nobel Prize for discovering the structure of DNA (the famous double helix), writes: “The origin of life appears to bealmost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to be satisfied to get it going” (italics added). Professor Harold Klein, chairman of the U. S. National Academy of Sciences committee that reviewed origin-of-life research, writes: “The simplest bacterium is so damn complicated that it is almost impossible to imagine how it happened” (italics added).

28. American Spectator magazine (May 2005) says: IMAGINE A NANOTECHNOLOGY MACHINE far beyond the state of the art: microminiaturized rotary motor and propeller system that drives a tiny vessel through liquid. The engine and drive mechanism are composed of 40 parts, including a rotor, stator, driveshaft, bushings, universal joint, and flexible propeller. The engine is powered by a flow of ions, can rotate at up to 100,000 rpm (ten times faster than a NASCAR racing engine), and can reverse direction in a quarter of a rotation. The system comes with an automatic feedback control mechanism. The engine itself is about 1/100,000th of an inch wide - far smaller than can be seen by the human eye.And then goes on …

29. Most of us would be pleasantly surprised to learn that some genius had designed such an engineering triumph. What might come as a greater surprise is that there is a dominant faction in the scientific community that is prepared to defend, at all costs, the assertion that this marvellous device could not possibly have been designed, must have been produced blindly by unintelligent material forces, and only gives the appearance of being designed.

30. How did life originate? (Cont) • The chemical factory receives its instructions from the very complicated DNA code. • The DNA is a code written in a four letter ‘alphabet’. (Each letter is a different nucleotide.) • The DNA code even for a simple bacteria may be a thousands of ‘letters’ long. • These letters have to be in a particular order to provide the information necessary for the manufacture of the proteins. • The DNA sends its instructions to the cytoplasm via the RNA which ‘translates’ the instructions so that the cytoplasm can ‘understand’. • The DNA, cytoplasm and the RNA are themselves made by the very cells of which they are a part!

31. Some say that life’s beginnings may have been much simpler than this. However we still have the problem of the origin, not just of complexity, but of information.

32. How did life originate? (Cont) • The Atheist Richard Dawkins writes: • What lies at the heart of every living thing is not a fire, warm breath, nor a 'spark of life'. It is information, words, instructions . . . Think of a billin discrete digital characters . . . If you want to understand life, think about information technology.

33. How did life originate? (Cont) • In his award winning book ‘Consilience’ Edward Wilson the eminent non religious science writer who has recently won many prestigious prizes tells us that cells use“very modern technology involving digital logic, analogue-digital conversion and signal integration.”He tells us that this complexity exceeds that of“super-computers and space vehicles.”

34. How did life originate? (Cont) • Encyclopaedia Britannica: • The origin of the code. • A critical and unsolved problem in the origin of life is the origin of the genetic code. The molecular apparatus supporting the operation of the code the activating enzymes, adapter RNAs, messenger RNAs, and so on are themselves each produced according to instructions contained within the code. At the time of the origin of the code such an elaborate molecular apparatus was of course absent.

35. How did life originate? (Cont) • Douglas Hofstadter, (a world famous and non religious artificial intelligence expert) writes: • "A natural and fundamental question to ask, on learning of these incredibly, intricately interlocking pieces of software and hardware is: 'How did they ever get started in the first place?'..... from simple molecules to entire cells is almost beyond one's power to imagine. There are various theories on the origin of life. They all run aground on this most central of central questions: "How did the Genetic Code, along with the mechanisms for its translation originate?" For the moment we will have to content ourselves with a sense of wonder and awe, rather than with an answer.'

36. Michael Polanyi's gave his reaction to the claim that the discovery of the DNA double helix is the final proof that living things are physically and chemically determined. No said Polanyi it proves the opposite. No arrangement of physical units can be a code and convey information unless the order of its units is not fixed by its physical chemical make-up. His example is a railway station on the Welsh border where an arrangement of pebbles on a bank spelled the message - "Welcome to Wales by British Rail". This information content of pebbles clearly showed that their arrangement was not due to their physical chemical interaction but to a purpose on the part of the stationmaster ... The arrangement of the DNA could have come about chance, just as the pebbles on that station could have rolled down a hillside and arranged themselves in the worlds of the message, but it would be bizarre to maintain that this was so ...

37. But how did self-replicating organisms arise in the first place? It is fair to say that at the present time (2006) we do not know. No current hypothesis comes close to explaining how …….. the prebiotic environment that existed on planet earth gave rise to life. (Francis Collins, head of the human Genome project)

38. Messages, languages, and coded information ONLY come from minds. (Minds are conscious.) - minds that have agreed on an alphabet and a meaning of words and sentences and that express both desire and intent. • If we analyze language with advanced mathematics and engineering communication theory, we can say: • Messages, languages and coded information never come from anything else besides a mind. No-one has ever produced a single example of a message that did not come from a mind. • Languages etc can be carried by matter or energy (eg sounds, ink, electronic and radio signals) but they are none of these things. Indeed they are not matter or energy at all. They are not ‘physical’. • The physical universe can create fascinating patterns - snowflakes, crystals, stalactites, tornados, turbulence and cloud formations etc. But non-living and non-conscious things cannot create language. They cannot create codes.

39. Retired professor of Mathematics in Oxford Roger Penrose FRS (making no religious profession – but calling himself a Platonist, in his book ‘Shadows of the Mind’ ) claims in his more recent book ‘Road to Reality’ that there is a transcendent truth, a transcendent beauty, and a transcendent goodness and that they are one. So for him mathematical truth is to be discovered, not invented. (Bertrand Russell held this position until his ‘escape from Pythagoras’, as he calls it.)

40. A hierarchy of mysteries: The nature of: • Conscious life (human) that can: • reason (think abstractly and universally), • ponder its own life, death, and possible life after death. • be aware of good and evil, • know that it is responsible (partly) for its own behaviour. • Conscious life - such as the higher animals have. • Life - anything that is alive - such as plants. • Matter - material or physical existence.

41. The Argument from Design. Bertrand Russell (sceptic though he was) greatly respected the argument from design especially as expounded by Leibniz. (He regarded Leibniz, in whom he specialised, as "one of the supreme intellects of all time") BR writes: "This argument contends that, on a survey of the known world, we find things which cannot plausibly be explained as the product of blind natural forces, but are much more reasonably to be regarded as evidences of a beneficent purpose." He regards this familiar argument as having no "formal logical defect". He rightly points out that it does not prove the infinite or good God of normal religious belief but nevertheless says, that if true, (and BR does not give any argument against it) it demonstrates that God is "vastly wiser and more powerful than we are". (See his chapter on Leibniz in his History Of Western Philosophy.)

42. How do we arrive at a scientific theory? By inferences. Are these inferences or reasonings themselves physical? The materialist says ‘Yes’. Because he/she believes the physical is everything. One person makes one inference and another makes another based on the same data. How do you decide which is right? By reason. But that too would be the result of physical processes. But evolution is a physical theory. It can’t therefore explain the human capacity for reasoning and making scientific theories. It can’t explain human attributes that have nothing to do with survival in the future. E.g. music.

43. “How did natural selection prepare the mind for civilisation before civilisation ever existed?” He goes on: “That is the great mystery of evolution: how to account for calculus and Mozart … Natural Selection does not anticipate future needs.”(E. O. Wilson: Consilience)

44. Harvard to Investigate Origins of Life Mon Aug 15 2005. Harvard University is joining the long-running debate over the theory of evolution by launching a research project to study how life began. The team of researchers will receive $1 million in funding annually from Harvard over the next few years. The project begins with an admission that some mysteries about life's origins cannot be explained. (This is an admission that the origin of life remains a mystery.)

45. But how did self-replicating organisms arise in the first place? It is fair to say that at the present time (2006) we do not know. No current hypothesis comes close to explaining how …….. the prebiotic environment that existed on planet earth gave rise to life. (Francis Collins, head of the human Genome project, and author of ‘The Language of God.’)

46. Science has been v. successful in explaining much (but not all) in the physical world. It does not follow that non-physical does not exist or is not needed to explain the behaviour of the physical world!

47. How did life originate? (Cont) • My comment: • We can add to the mystery of the `miracle' by noting that the DNA, by itself, is useless; it must be translated via the RNA so that its `message' can be put to use by the cytoplasm `factory'. • The problem is that the RNA that links the DNA with the factory, itself is manufactured by that very factory which cannot function without the RNA and the DNA! Indeed each component depends on the other for its manufacture. • Try to imagine a factory for making computers - the factory itself being run from the beginning by the very computers it alone can manufacture! • This is only one of the enigmas of the origin of life even in its simple forms.

48. An individual life form is more complex than the DNA codes in his cells. • I am more complex than even the cell of life from which I grew. • Just consider one of a thousands of possible examples • the brain. • Writing about the brain Richard Dawkins in his preface to `The Blind Watchmaker', tells us: • "The brain with which you are understanding my words is an array of some ten million kiloneurones (ten thousand million neurones). Many of these billions of nerve cells have each more than a thousand `electric wires' connecting them to other neurones." • Where does this greater complexity come from?

49. An individual life form is more complex than the DNA codes in its cells. (Cont) • The Plot thickens - differentiation! • Research Chemist Ernest Lucas tells us: • "The single fertilised egg does not have miniature arms and legs. These new structures appear later as the cells multiply and divide. • If every cell in my body contains the same DNA code, how, at the beginning of my life, does each new cell know whether it is to be part of a nose, my liver, etc? • How does this mystery ofdifferentiationhappen? • Who or what tells it?

50. An individual life is more complex than its DNA codes. (Differentiation Cont) Paul Davies writes: If every molecule of DNA possesses the same global plan for the whole organism, how is it that different cells implement different parts of that plan? Is there, perhaps, a `metaplan' to tell each cell which part of the plan to implement? If so, where is the metaplan located? In the DNA? But this is surely to fall into infinite regress.