← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · friedrich braun
Thread ID: 15925 | Posts: 19 | Started: 2004-12-09
2004-12-09 21:29 | User Profile
Famous Atheist Now Believes in God
One of World's Leading Atheists Now Believes in God, More or Less, Based on Scientific Evidence The Associated Press
Dec. 9, 2004 - A British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion of atheism for more than a half-century has changed his mind. He now believes in God more or less based on scientific evidence, and says so on a video released Thursday.
At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature, Flew said in a telephone interview from England.
Flew said he's best labeled a deist like Thomas Jefferson, whose God was not actively involved in people's lives.
"I'm thinking of a God very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam, because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins," he said. "It could be a person in the sense of a being that has intelligence and a purpose, I suppose."
Flew first made his mark with the 1950 article "Theology and Falsification," based on a paper for the Socratic Club, a weekly Oxford religious forum led by writer and Christian thinker C.S. Lewis.
Over the years, Flew proclaimed the lack of evidence for God while teaching at Oxford, Aberdeen, Keele, and Reading universities in Britain, in visits to numerous U.S. and Canadian campuses and in books, articles, lectures and debates.
There was no one moment of change but a gradual conclusion over recent months for Flew, a spry man who still does not believe in an afterlife.
Yet biologists' investigation of DNA "has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved," Flew says in the new video, "Has Science Discovered God?"
The video draws from a New York discussion last May organized by author Roy Abraham Varghese's Institute for Metascientific Research in Garland, Texas. Participants were Flew; Varghese; Israeli physicist Gerald Schroeder, an Orthodox Jew; and Roman Catholic philosopher John Haldane of Scotland's University of St. Andrews.
The first hint of Flew's turn was a letter to the August-September issue of Britain's Philosophy Now magazine. "It has become inordinately difficult even to begin to think about constructing a naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first reproducing organism," he wrote.
The letter commended arguments in Schroeder's "The Hidden Face of God" and "The Wonder of the World" by Varghese, an Eastern Rite Catholic layman.
This week, Flew finished writing the first formal account of his new outlook for the introduction to a new edition of his "God and Philosophy," scheduled for release next year by Prometheus Press.
Prometheus specializes in skeptical thought, but if his belief upsets people, well "that's too bad," Flew said. "My whole life has been guided by the principle of Plato's Socrates: Follow the evidence, wherever it leads."
Last week, Richard Carrier, a writer and Columbia University graduate student, posted new material based on correspondence with Flew on the atheistic [url]www.infidels.org[/url] Web page. Carrier assured atheists that Flew accepts only a "minimal God" and believes in no afterlife.
Flew's "name and stature are big. Whenever you hear people talk about atheists, Flew always comes up," Carrier said. Still, when it comes to Flew's reversal, "apart from curiosity, I don't think it's like a big deal."
Flew told The Associated Press his current ideas have some similarity with American "intelligent design" theorists, who see evidence for a guiding force in the construction of the universe. He accepts Darwinian evolution but doubts it can explain the ultimate origins of life.
A Methodist minister's son, Flew became an atheist at 15.
Early in his career, he argued that no conceivable events could constitute proof against God for believers, so skeptics were right to wonder whether the concept of God meant anything at all.
Another landmark was his 1984 "The Presumption of Atheism," playing off the presumption of innocence in criminal law. Flew said the debate over God must begin by presuming atheism, putting the burden of proof on those arguing that God exists.
On the Net:
Varghese page:
Infidels on Flew:
Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Copyright é 2004 ABC News Internet Ventures
2004-12-09 22:33 | User Profile
[QUOTE=friedrich braun]Flew said he's best labeled a deist like Thomas Jefferson, whose God was not actively involved in people's lives.[/QUOTE]
Well, at least he's half way there. At 80 though, the clock's definitely ticking.
Where's madrussian? The number of his fellow scientism adherents seems to be dwindling.
2004-12-09 22:49 | User Profile
Are you saying Flew and other Deists are going to Hell? :unsure:
I doubt God is so petty that he would destine somebody to eternal sufferings for expressing honest doubts about Christian dogma or for using his obviously considerable mental faculties in the pursuit of science or philosophy. At any rate, if God would send people such as Flew to Hell on the aforementioned basis only, I wouldn't want anything to do with Him (and He indeed would be a version of the bloodthirsty, dictatorial, Oriental despot and little more -- something I refuse to believe).
2004-12-09 23:01 | User Profile
Jesus said..."I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." - Gospel of John 14:6
[QUOTE=friedrich braun]Are you saying Flew and other Deists are going to Hell? :unsure:[/QUOTE]
Ultimately it's not me saying it Friedrich, but to be clear, yes, that's the bottom-line truth.
2004-12-09 23:26 | User Profile
[QUOTE=friedrich braun]I doubt God is so petty that he would destine somebody to eternal sufferings for expressing honest doubts about Christian dogma or for using his obviously considerable mental faculties in the pursuit of science or philosophy. [/QUOTE]
Is that somebody righteous?
2004-12-10 01:31 | User Profile
[QUOTE=friedrich braun]Are you saying Flew and other Deists are going to Hell? :unsure: [/QUOTE]What brought this little injecture in there anyway Friedrich, to bring this up ad hoc? From determining objectively the reasons for the existance of a higher power, to passing judgement on the nature, personality, and moral discernment of the God we know is quite a leap. It is usually not done overtly, as the person who does so would appear to be in a state of clouded judgement regarding the existance of God, psychologically operating in therealm of denial over what he might fear to happen to him from righteous judgement.
People who have spent their entire life pretending there isn't a God probably haven't taken much time to know him and deal with him. I guess they'll just have to take their chances now won't they? I for one however have faith, for what its worth to you, that the mercires of God are greater than that of other mens' or that of what men rightfully deserve. Beyond that I will not try to play God. Anthony Flew has tried to do so his entire life, and now is starting to realize he made a mistake. Much better if he had realized so earlier.
2004-12-10 15:31 | User Profile
[URL=http://www.nynewsday.com/news/nationworld/nation/wire/sns-ap-believing-atheist,0,985912.story?coll=sns-ap-nation-headlines]Famous Atheist Now Believes in God[/URL]
2004-12-10 18:10 | User Profile
Walt, I believe Friedrich Braun already has a thread started on this -- [url]http://www.originaldissent.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15925/url
2004-12-10 18:21 | User Profile
As I have pointed out before, in all the history of science, no one has ever observed the slightest tendency of species to "evolve." Evolutionists will ignore mountains of examples of observed stasis and degineration of species and point to a degenerative mutation with a fortuitous benefit as evolutionary progress as proof of Evolution. That's the intellectual equivalent of finding a very small bit of pyrite (fool's gold) laying on a street and then declaring that the street is made of gold.
Everything science knows about life says that it's impossible for life to appear from non-life. There's not even a mechanism of mutation and selection that can be used in voodoo fashion to support abiogenesis.
Atheism is foolish.
I also have my doubts about the wisdom of mere deism. The belief in an intelligent creator of the universe, one that must have had on-going involvement in the universe (at least to create life). But, an intelligent creator who has no interest in revealing himself to intelligent beings that he has created?
Maybe if Antony Flew can live a couple more decades, he might complete his journey and find not only is there God, but God has revealed himself to man.
2004-12-11 03:04 | User Profile
[B] I for one however have faith, for what its worth to you, that the mercires of God are greater than that of other mens' or that of what men rightfully deserve. Beyond that I will not try to play God.[/B]
Your answer seems more reasonable than that of TD.
2004-12-11 06:28 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Texas Dissident]Well, at least he's half way there. At 80 though, the clock's definitely ticking.
Where's madrussian? The number of his fellow scientism adherents seems to be dwindling.[/QUOTE]Texas D,
You ought to read Varghese's Cosmos, Bios, and Theos for some incredibly religious answers given by the very top scientists in this country and abroad-- including many Nobel prize winners in physics, chemistry, physiology/medicine. Their answers were not wishy-washy either, and many made pains to articulate that their concept of God was not the naturalist BS (God= laws of physics). In Steven Weinberg's The Final Three Minutes he refers to a number of top theoretical physicists who are religious believers (e.g., he says he knows an experimental physicist who is a practicing Anglican priest [obviously Plokinghorne] and two general relativists who are devout Catholics-- in private correspondence Weinberg told me he was probably referring to Charles Misner [and the other I gathered must have been Peter Hodgson, theoretical physicist and fellow at Corpus Christi College, Oxford University].
Former Cornell physicist and ABC science reporter, Michael Guillen, has come out with a new book (don't know the title) about the large percentage of scientists and "smart people" who believe in God and are more often than not part of a religious tradition.
I don't know why it took until now for someone to take on the myth of scientists being non-believers, and science being at odds with religious faith. if you read the biographies of the very greatest minds it is rare to find out that they were not religious, or more rare to find out they were atheist. Nearly all the great minds that thought up the mathematics used in modern physics and engineering were devout Christians. Einstein's theory of relativity rested completely on the mathematics of Bernhard Reimann, a devout Lutheran whose first love was reading the Bible (and second love was math!). Read E.T. Bell's Men of Mathematics. Also, go online to the list of courses in the math department at MIT or Princeton and look for specific names mentioned in the course descriptions (e.g., Green-Gauss-Stokes, Cauchy, Reimann, et al.) then go to the Yahoo directory: science: math: mathematicians and look up the brief biographies on these guys. What is most shocking is that quite a few are Christian clergymen. And if they don't refer to his religious affiliation, you can assume he is just another religious French Catholic (e.g., Pascal, Descartes, Cauchy, et al.). In contemporary Western society we are bombarded by the accomplishments of theoretical physicists, especially Einstein. But strangely we never hear about the minds that develops the mathematics that all of theoretical physics is based on. Perhaps because these true geniuses were, without exception, Christians.
2004-12-11 06:43 | User Profile
I think it is within the realm of Christian orthodoxy to hold that few if any souls are destined for Hell. In fact, given the reality of Hell-- complete separation from God-- it seems impossible for any creature to go there if a thing is (has existence, "esse"). But based on the Bible and Jesus's own words we know Hell is a very real thing, but we can't say who or if anyone goes there (but I have candidates :thumbsup: ).
2004-12-11 14:44 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Jack Cassidy]I think it is within the realm of Christian orthodoxy to hold that few if any souls are destined for Hell. In fact, given the reality of Hell-- complete separation from God-- it seems impossible for any creature to go there if a thing is (has existence, "esse"). But based on the Bible and Jesus's own words we know Hell is a very real thing, but we can't say who or if anyone goes there (but I have candidates :thumbsup: ).[/QUOTE]
I am of the opinion that few go to heaven directly, but few also land forever in hell, but that the great bulk of us do our time in purgatory. Some of us will do a lot of time, some just a short stint. Christ bought us a reprieve from hell, but we must set right the consequences of our own sins in this world.
[QUOTE]Matthew 5:26 Verily I say unto thee, Thou shalt by no means come out thence, till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.[/QUOTE]
The complexity of the entire universe shouts the existence of the Creator. But even if we disregard all of that, there is no way that life can be explained as arising from chance.
[QUOTE]Yet biologists' investigation of DNA "has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved," Flew says in the new video, "Has Science Discovered God?"[/QUOTE]
Darwinism is alive and well as a theory because it robustly and elegantly explains so much. That is how it should be. But Darwinists err egregiously - even ludicrously - when they assert that Darwinism obviates the need of a Creator to explain life.
Unfortunately, Darwinism was born in an age when militant atheism was ascendant, and it remains imbued with its spirit even after the work of the past nearly 60 years beginning with Watson and Crick and continuing on with the astonishing revelations of biochemistry show beyond reasonable doubt that DNA isn't some random process of blind nature, it is rather obviously an ARTIFACT. We were invented.
Many of these scientists are clinging to their 19th century prejudices, but more and more Darwinists are coming to admit that DNA with its mind boggling yet IRREDUCIBLE complexity simply could not have arisen though random processes. They can no longer deny that they were created in the face of all that evidence and remain true to the scientific method.
And once we realize we're creatures, we naturally start looking for the Creator.
Walter
2004-12-11 18:12 | User Profile
[QUOTE=friedrich braun]Famous Atheist Now Believes in God
One of World's Leading Atheists Now Believes in God, More or Less, Based on Scientific Evidence The Associated Press
Dec. 9, 2004 - A British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion of atheism for more than a half-century has changed his mind. He now believes in God more or less based on scientific evidence, and says so on a video released Thursday.
At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature, Flew said in a telephone interview from England.
Flew said he's best labeled a deist like Thomas Jefferson, whose God was not actively involved in people's lives.
"[COLOR=Red]I'm thinking of a God very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam, because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins[/COLOR]," he said. "It could be a person in the sense of a being that has intelligence and a purpose, I suppose."[/QUOTE]The arguments posted after the initial posting do not consider his belief in a supernatural force. Many brilliant men have little use for the Old Testament.
Jack Cassidy[QUOTE]I don't know why it took until now for someone to take on the myth of scientists being non-believers, and science being at odds with religious faith. if you read the biographies of the very greatest minds it is rare to find out that they were not religious, or more rare to find out they were atheist. Nearly all the great minds that thought up the mathematics used in modern physics and engineering were devout Christians. Einstein's theory of relativity rested completely on the mathematics of Bernhard Reimann, a devout Lutheran whose first love was reading the Bible (and second love was math!). Read E.T. Bell's Men of Mathematics. Also, go online to the list of courses in the math department at MIT or Princeton and look for specific names mentioned in the course descriptions (e.g., Green-[COLOR=Red][B][I]Gauss[/I][/B][/COLOR]-Stokes, Cauchy, Reimann, et al.)[/QUOTE]Gauss was not a believer.
Kurt Godel's Incompleteness Theorem will be recognized as man's greatest intellectual achievemnt of the 20th century. (So says I who understands little of it.) Yet Godel wrote on the existence of God. Please see below.
Kurt Godelââ¬â¢s Proof of Godââ¬â¢s existence
[url]http://www.stats.uwaterloo.ca/~cgsmall/ontology.html[/url]
Internet searches for ââ¬ÅGodelââ¬â¢s Proofââ¬Â will reveal many books dedicated to his work.
[url]http://setlonnert.com/download/texts/godel.html[/url]
[QUOTE]Proof of God by Kurt Gödel Explanation: P(psi) P is "positive" G(x) x have the property God ess. essential E existing ââ¬Â¢ (bullet) Necessary This "proof" on the existence of God, hasn't been published. But Dana Scott who belonged to the closest circle around Gödel, claimed this were constructed by Gödel. In 1970 Dana Scott sent this alledged proof to Stig Kanger. Stig Kanger was a professor of theoretical philosophy in Uppsala, but died in 1988. I was one of his latest pupils. Stig distributed this proof at the department in Uppsala and perhaps it also has been distributed in the USA. This was one of the earliest texts that I still keep up at the web (1995 or thereabout). Nowadays there has been a publication of the colleced papers by Gödel, and this proof (or something very similiar) is edited and published therein. [/QUOTE]
2004-12-12 05:35 | User Profile
Atheist Becomes Theist Exclusive Interview with Former Atheist Antony Flew
[url]http://www.biola.edu/antonyflew/[/url]
2004-12-12 06:02 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]I am of the opinion that few go to heaven directly, but few also land forever in hell, but that the great bulk of us do our time in purgatory. Some of us will do a lot of time, some just a short stint. Christ bought us a reprieve from hell, but we must set right the consequences of our own sins in this world. [/QUOTE]This seems to be the most reasonable scenario. The whole Christian story-- salvation history-- is simply the prodigal son writ large. It is all about our final return to God, this is the final act. It is not for no reason that all the great love stories of literature, movies, art-- esp. between a loving parent and his or her son or daughter-- follow this theme: conflict, moving away, separation, a momentous reason for returning home, and finally, reunion.
2004-12-13 02:12 | User Profile
[B]Has Antony Flew ceased to be an atheist?[/B]
In a sensationalist campaign in the internet, it is alleged that Professor Antony Flew, British philosopher, reputed rationalist, atheist and Honorary Associate of Rationalist International, has left atheism and decided that a god might exist.
The controversy revolves around some remarks of Prof. Antony Flew that seems to allow different interpretations. Has Antony Flew ever asserted that "probably God exists"? Richard Carrier, editor in chief of the Secular Web quotes Antony Flew from a letter addressed to him in his own hand (dated 19 October 2004): "I do not think I will ever make that assertion, precisely because any assertion which I am prepared to make about God would not be about a God in that sense ... I think we need here a fundamental distinction between the God of Aristotle or Spinoza and the Gods of the Christian and the Islamic Revelations."
This is not the first time that Professor Antony Flew's atheist position is attacked. In reaction to an internet campaign in 2001 that tried to brand him a "convert" to religious belief, Professor Antony Flew made the following statement. In 2003 he answered yet another campaign in this direction with the same statement. It is still now his latest official position in this regard.
Sorry to Disappoint, but I'm Still an Atheist!
Prof. Antony Flew
Prof. Antony Flew Richard C. Carrier, current Editor in Chief of the Secular Web, tells me that "the internet has now become awash with rumors" that I "have converted to Christianity, or am at least no longer an atheist." Perhaps because I was born too soon to be involved in the internet world I had heard nothing of this rumour. So Mr. Carrier asks me to explain myself in cyberspace. This, with the help of the Internet Infidels, I now attempt.
Those rumours speak false. I remain still what I have been now for over fifty years, a negative atheist. By this I mean that I construe the initial letter in the word 'atheist' in the way in which everyone construes the same initial letter in such words as 'atypical' and 'amoral'. For I still believe that it is impossible either to verify or to falsify - to show to be false - what David Hume in his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion happily described as "the religious hypothesis." The more I contemplate the eschatological teachings of Christianity and Islam the more I wish I could demonstrate their falsity.
I first argued the impossibility in 'Theology and Falsification', a short paper originally published in 1950 and since reprinted over forty times in different places, including translations into German, Italian, Spanish, Danish, Welsh, Finnish and Slovak. The most recent reprint was as part of 'A Golden Jubilee Celebration' in the October/November 2001 issue of the semi-popular British journal Philosophy Now, which the editors of that periodical have graciously allowed the Internet Infidels to publish online: see "Theology & Falsification."
I can suggest only one possible source of the rumours. Several weeks ago I submitted to the Editor of Philo (The Journal of the Society of Humanist Philosophers) a short paper making two points which might well disturb atheists of the more positive kind. The point more relevant here was that it can be entirely rational for believers and negative atheists to respond in quite different ways to the same scientific developments.
We negative atheists are bound to see the Big Bang cosmology as requiring a physical explanation; and that one which, in the nature of the case, may nevertheless be forever inaccessible to human beings. But believers may, equally reasonably, welcome the Big Bang cosmology as tending to confirm their prior belief that "in the beginning" the Universe was created by God.
Again, negative atheists meeting the argument that the fundamental constants of physics would seem to have been 'fine tuned' to make the emergence of mankind possible will first object to the application of either the frequency or the propensity theory of probability 'outside' the Universe, and then go on to ask why omnipotence should have been satisfied to produce a Universe in which the origin and rise of the human race was merely possible rather than absolutely inevitable. But believers are equally bound and, on their opposite assumptions, equally justified in seeing the Fine Tuning Argument as providing impressive confirmation of a fundamental belief shared by all the three great systems of revealed theistic religion - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. For all three are agreed that we human beings are members of a special kind of creatures, made in the image of God and for a purpose intended by God.
In short, I recognize that developments in physics coming on the last twenty or thirty years can reasonably be seen as in some degree confirmatory of a previously faith-based belief in god, even though they still provide no sufficient reason for unbelievers to change their minds. They certainly have not persuaded me.
Copyright é 2004 Rationalist International. The recipients of Rationalist International Bulletin may publish, post, forward or reproduce articles and reports from it, acknowledging the source: Rationalist International Bulletin # 137. Copyright é 2004 Rationalist International
2004-12-13 18:33 | User Profile
[QUOTE=Jack Cassidy]I don't know why it took until now for someone to take on the myth of scientists being non-believers, and science being at odds with religious faith. if you read the biographies of the very greatest minds it is rare to find out that they were not religious, or more rare to find out they were atheist.[/QUOTE]
I'm sure you're right, Jack.
I was mainly trying to get a rise out of madrussian--something to draw him out of his shell here and get him posting again.
2004-12-14 06:59 | User Profile
[QUOTE=edward gibbon]The arguments posted after the initial posting do not consider his belief in a supernatural force. Many brilliant men have little use for the Old Testament.
Jack CassidyGauss was not a believer.
Kurt Godel's Incompleteness Theorem will be recognized as man's greatest intellectual achievemnt of the 20th century. (So says I who understands little of it.) Yet Godel wrote on the existence of God. Please see below.
Kurt Godelââ¬â¢s Proof of Godââ¬â¢s existence
[url="http://www.stats.uwaterloo.ca/~cgsmall/ontology.html"]http://www.stats.uwaterloo.ca/~cgsmall/ontology.html[/url]
Internet searches for ââ¬ÅGodelââ¬â¢s Proofââ¬Â will reveal many books dedicated to his work.
[url="http://setlonnert.com/download/texts/godel.html"]http://setlonnert.com/download/texts/godel.html[/url][/QUOTE]
From a Gauss biography on the web:
[font=Verdana][color=#0000cc]http://www.rare-earth-magnets.com/magnet_university/carl_friedrich_gauss.htm<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
[font=Verdana]