28:50 - 30:00 Lennox: The ancient language of DNA points more to the existence of the divine logos who started it, than to the notion that it could be explained in purely naturalistic terms. This extreme reductionism removes the very basis of this discussion. L believes it's all been designed, but that doesn't stop science. D's dichotomy that it's either God or science may put people off science, because they prefer God, and that would be a pity.
DNA may well turn out to be direct code for proteins, just as micro-grooves on vinyl records are direct code for sound. L is right that faith in God doesn't stop science, but wrong that insistence on science may put some people off it. People who think they can 'prefer God to science' are buying into the false dichotomy and can be convinced of its falsehood.
30:01 - Dawkins: L is hopping around, let's focus on scientific approach. When L feels like it, he will smuggle in magic. Miracles in the Bible and in the origin of life. D can't explain the origin of life, nobody can. (Lennox - But D believes that it will have a naturalistic solution.) D agrees. It's a cowardly cop-out to suggest that just because we don't yet understand something, therefore, magic did it. (L agrees. That's the God of the gaps idea.) That's exactly what L is putting forward: the God of the gaps. L is pointing to the origin of life and the origin of DNA and saying Darwin has done everything after the origin of life, but he hasn't done the origin of life. That's the God of the gaps. (L disagrees.)
D is right that you shouldn't stop exploring by bringing in God whenever you don't understand something, but wrong that you shouldn't reflect on the nature of what you're exploring. L is right that the hugely complex nature of life can be a pointer, i.e. a trace of something that is out of our scientific reach.
31:10 - 32:39 Lennox: There may well be two kinds of gaps: bad gaps that science closes, and gaps that science opens up. D's assumption is that there will be an exhaustive, reductionist, naturalistic explanation of everything in scientific terms. L doesn't think so. If there is a God, and if He created this universe, and if He is personal, L would expect to see God's traces in the universe (such as the mathematical describability, fine-tuning, and the marvellous sophistication of the world), cases where the more we try to analyse and understand something in purely reductionist terms, it will get more and more difficult, instead of more and more simple. There may not be many cases like that, but the origin of life might be one of them.
L's philosophical point is relevant here, because while D insists that science will explain everything by natural processes, he doesn't seem to acknowledge either the huge difference between explaining what happened to existing cells and how cells came about, or that random natural processes provide no basis for the rational debate he is having with L.
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