Views of John Polkinghorne

• Explanation is needed for the fact that the world is intelligible:

  • Hume suggested that the universe naturally goes through cycles of order and chaos, and that this is a period of order that has nothing to do with god; but for Polkinghorne that is noting more than speculation
  • Multiverse theory suggests that the number of universes is potentially infinite, so some of them will appear ordered purely by chance, without the need for God. Polkinghorne insists that there is no evidence that multiverses exist, so the argument against God fails
• The idea of providence is at the heart of God's relationship with the world and humankind

  • God creates, cares for and sustains life for a purpose
  • God does thus in a way that humans cannot detect
  • Critics would say that this does not really address the evidential problem of evil
• Both religion and science are concerned with understanding and making sense of experience

  • Religious experiences do require serious consideration
  • The differences as seen in the different religions are due to cultural conditioning, but are nevertheless experiences of the same reality
  • Critics would say that this could lead to the conclusion that the whole of Christianity is simply a culturally conditioned interpretation of religion and its claims cannot be compared or assessed like scientific facts
• The Bible gives evidence for Christian claims about Jesus that can be rationally examined just as a scientific theory can

  • Critics would say that a scientific theory arises out of repeated experiment; claims about Jesus are made on one unrepeatable series of events said to give a unique revelation of God
  • Scientific theories are empirically based, whereas claims about Jesus are matters of belief
• The claim that there is a God seems to many to be one that can be made on the basis of evidence and as such can be treated in the same way as a scientific claim

  • Christianity is compatible with science, in that both are different ways of understanding reality
  • Critics would argue that at best this argues for the existence of a God in the sense of deism as opposed to theism. The specific claims about Jesus, which make Christianity the religion that it is, cannot have a scientific basis, but are based on belief