Re: George Coyne and Richard Dawkins

On Wed, 22 May 2024 07:44:39 -0700, John Harshman
<john.harshman@gmail.com> wrote:

On 5/22/24 1:59 AM, Richmond wrote:

*Hemidactylus* <ecphoric@allspamis.invalid> writes:
 

Richmond <dnomhcir@gmx.com> wrote:

Martin Harran <martinharran@gmail.com> writes:
>

On Tue, 21 May 2024 14:58:19 +0100, Richmond <dnomhcir@gmx.com> wrote:
>

Martin Harran <martinharran@gmail.com> writes:
>

On Tue, 21 May 2024 10:54:16 +0100, Richmond <dnomhcir@gmx.com> wrote:
>

Martin Harran <martinharran@gmail.com> writes:
>

On Mon, 20 May 2024 17:16:16 +0100, Richmond <dnomhcir@gmx.com> wrote:
>

In this interview, at the point I link to:
>
https://youtu.be/68ejfHahFK4?t=254
>
Father Coyne offers Neodarwinian Evolution as an explanation
for, among other things, the origin of the universe. And
Professor Dawkins agrees with him. How does evolution of any
kind have anything to do with the origin of the universe?
surely it would need something to evolve from?

>
I got the impression that he was using "evolution" in a wider
sense than just *biological* evolution, that life itself
"evolved" from chemical reactions.

>
I suppose you could interpret "origin of the universe" as "origin
of the content of the universe" and then say that it evolved from
pure energy. But I am not sure if that is evolution strictly, or
just changing from one thing to another. And I am not sure if
energy is different from content, or if universe is different
from content of the universe. In summary, I am not sure.

>
When talking about a subject in what is essentially a metaphysical
way. I think we shouldn't get too hung up on the precise meaning
of specific words, it's the ideas behind the words that matter.
>

>

>
A fascinating interview that I had not seen before, thanks for
the link. Whilst I was aware of George Coyne, I never really
explored his ideas before and I was fascinated by how much what
he was saying echoed my own beliefs and ideas - there was
nothing he said that I would argue with and I thought he handled
Dawkins extremely well.

>
The TV series from which it was excluded was quite
entertaining. I think in that series Dawkins was struggling to
keep the lid on his temper at times, although that could just be
his natural expression.

>
I wasn't aware of that series. Any idea why this episode was
excluded?

>
At the beginning of the video Dawkins explains that it was left out
as there was too much overlap with an interview with the Archbishop
of Canterbury.

>
OK, I forgot that your link started ~4 mins in. I'll be interested
to hunt down the Archbishop of Canterbury episode, but I'd expect it
to have a lot of overlap with George Coyne. I think that a lot of
USians make the mistake of regarding the likes of Ken Ham as a
representative of mainstream Christianity when he isn't - at least
not outside the USA!

>
Coyne sounds rather confused to me. He doesn't seem to know what God
is. He says God is not an engineer, and then he says God created the
universe, that he is a prime mover, and gave us brains, and then he
says God is superflous and doesn't explain things.
>

Coyne doesn't think we are apes, so I disagree with him there.

 
He acknowledges that we evolved from apes so it is just how the
categories are defined. I think he means we are not identical to what he
thinks of as an ape.
 

But at around 56:31 when Dawkins asks him about ensoulment (a bugbear
of mine) Coyne says he doesn't believe in the soul. Coyne explicitly
says around 56:43 that he doesn't "believe this idea of at some time
in the evolutionary process God put a soul…"

 
He got himself into that pickle by saying God is not an intervening
engineer. The alternative is that every living thing has a soul.

>
There are other alternatives. For example, the soul could be an emergent
property of the body, particularly of the brain. If he gave us brains
(mentioned above), souls could have come along with that, and perhaps
even gradually.

Coyne more or less says that when he refers to Teilhard de Chardin.

Maybe chimps have near-but-not-quite-souls.

Thomas Aquinas reasoned that animals other than humans have souls but
they are less developed than human souls in that they are incapable of
being aware of God and don't survive after death. The word 'animal'
itself originates from 'anima' which is the Latin word for 'soul' and
'breath'.

>

Dawkins interrupts him. Seems he rejects ensoulment doctrine. But then
he invokes a Teilhardian spiritual emergence via evolution that God
was somehow involved in. More bottom up than top down? More continuous
than instantaneous. A bit fluffy though. Y
>
Coyne believes he survives death not a soul so he can have a gin and
tonic and play some tennis. He's got jokes. There were places earlier
in the talk with Dawk that I found myself departing from Coyne's
rhetoric but will need to review for details and time stamps.
>
It was a cordial talk, but Coyne commands some respect due to his
astrophysics background. Dawkins hit him with some tough pointed
questions where you could see Coyne grappling with the reconciliation
of his theistic evolutionism.

 
He has shifted around on what God is, partly identifying him with
everything, so that God can hide from physicists in plane sight, but that
makes God meaningless, or unnecessary, as Dawkins pointed out. And it
makes atheism indistinguishable from theism. But then he also has to
divide God in two, so he can have the God which loves him and everyone.
 
The comment toward the end was quite telling, he said he believed in the
virgin birth and resurrection "but don't press me". I think he states
this belief because he has to, as that's what he agreed to when he
became a priest.
 
Clearly he is divided in some way, and he is looking for ways to
rationalise that division, between small time scales or large, between
heart and mind, between faith and reason, between subjective and
objective....
>