while I was surfing the internet I come across following video by john Lennox and thought , it would be interesting to comment on it.
http://johnlennox.org/index.php/en/resource/limitations_of_science/
John Lennox
Well one of the best ways, I think of, seeing the limitations of science is to imagine a lady who I might call my aunt Meltada who've baked a beautiful cake and she is displaying it to the Nobel science prize winners of the world. And I asked them as master of the ceremony I suppose, to analyze the cake. And off course chemists will reduce it to elements and physicists to elementary particles and so on and we get a brilliant description of it. And then finally I say to them now thank you for the scientific descriptions and just got one last question, why did she make the cake. And off course the physicists can analyze it but the physicists clearly will not be able to tell me why she made the cake, in fact no scientist can, unless she reveals it to me. And the interesting thing about that is this, that when she reveals it and tells me it was made for her cousin, friend or something like this, that doesn't shut my reason off, I used my reason to see if her explanation make sense.Now, off course that raises very deep questions. It raises the question asked to whether there is a something or better someone is stand to the same relationship to the universe as Aunt Meltada does to the cake. And whether he has revealed anything and off course basic christian claim is that precisely what has happened. That the God who made the universe has revealed something. And that little illustration may be simple but it helps to explain another misapprehension that is very wide spread ,that revelation that is in terms of the bible revealing things is somehow against reason. that's nonsense, we used reason in all the areas even at understanding revelation. The point is there are different sources of information one of them is a study of nature and the other is as I believe the book of God's word. And when God reveal something in his word we don't shut our reason in fact we need our reason even to read it. But then we can see if what it says make sense and so that would be the approach to the question of the limits of the science that I would take.
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In my opinion John Lennox is saying two things. First science can't answer the why questions but revelations can. Second science and revelations are different sources of information. Now the question is can science answer the '' Why'' qustions? To answer this question we need to know what are the ''Why'' questions. First type of why questions I can think of are questions like why is the sky blue. Why are the plants green? Why the rivers flow? Etc. I would like to call these questions causal why questions and I think science can answer them perfectly fine. Another type of why questions are those questions I would like to call purpose why questions. For e.g. why do we have legs. Why do the birds have wings. Why is the knife sharp etc. And again I think science can answer these questions reasonably well if not perfectly. And finally there are why questions that ask the motives of the agent. The questions like why did aunt Matelda baked the cake? Why am I writing this? Why are you reading this? Etc. I think this is where he means science can't answer the why questions. And I agree with him that science can't answer those type of questions with 100 percent accuracy. However I have to mention that there are branches of science that attempt to answer some of these questions to certain degree , for e.g. forensics etc.
So what about revelations? Can they answer the motive why questions as john Lennox suggests? The answer is yes they can however, it has to be said that revelations are only as good as their revealers. Meaning revealer himself can be lying outright or even if he is indeed sincere, the message could be misunderstood, or he himself could be deceived, or is delusional. These become more potent when the revelations are not first hand. Therefore I have to conclude that revelations alone can not answers the motives why questions and moreover they can't answer any questions. Finally though I concede that revelations coupled with evidence may be some other thing after all,
