REASON AND REALITY Dr Ralph Norman Ralph Norman teaches Theology, Religion, Philosophy, and Ethics at Canterbury Christ Church University. He has taught Philosophy and Theology at the University for nearly 20 years. He also publishes research which explores links between both subjects.
One of the puzzling things about our minds is just how improbable they are. The laws of nature form a very fine-tuned system, and if any of a handful of factors had been even a fraction different there would be no so thing as intelligent life.1 As Stephen Hawking said, “Our universe and its laws appear to have a design that both is tailor-made to support us and, if we are to exist, leaves little room for alteration”.2 The physicist Paul Davies writes, “The existence of mind in some organism on some planet is surely a fact of fundamental significance. Through conscious beings the universe has generated self-awareness. This can be no trivial detail, no minor by-product of mindless,
M. Rees, Just Six Numbers (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1999). 2 S. Hawking and L. Mlodinow, The Grand Design (Bantam, 2011), p. 207. 1
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