Prof. Antony Flew
Posted on 12/13/2004 2:08:55 PM PST by snarks_when_bored
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.
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.
Goes to show that not all on FR is as it seems.
He's an agnostic, An Atheist is sure he "knows" there is no god, while an agnostic believes there could be.
Was an abc news report, not started on FR.
BTW welcome to FR.
He wishes he could say God definitely does not exist, but he can't.
I've often laid awake at night, fretting and sweating, dying to know the status of Antony Flew's theological development.
Something along those lines, I think. He points out something that many theists have talked about, i.e., that the Big Bang could be the handiwork of God. But, as a 'negative atheist' (or, if you will, agnostic), he comes down on the side of seeking a physical explanation for the Big Bang.
There's proof of supernatural forces, right there!
As I understand it, this is an up-dated version, responding to the recent spate of stories.
OK, so the old fool is still in darkness.
I wonder what Anthony Flew's favorite Rolling Stone song is? That question seems almost as important as whether or not he is a negative double secret athiest.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1400368,00.html
Antony Flew, 81, emeritus professor of philosophy at Reading University, whose arguments for atheism have influenced scholars around the world, has been converted to the view that some sort of deity created the universe.Flew, the son of a Methodist minister, is keen to repent. "As people have certainly been influenced by me, I want to try and correct the enormous damage I may have done," he said yesterday.
But he is unlikely to proclaim his faith from a pulpit. He is still not a Christian and dismisses the conventional forms of divinity as "the monstrous oriental despots of the religions of Christianity and Islam". He also stands by his rejection of an afterlife.
Looks like the old guy will get his answer soon enough. ;)
Saturday was December 11, 2004; this piece was published Sunday, December 12, 2004. So I guess the answer to your question is, yes.
Aristotle believed that the world always existed and the Unmoved Mover (i.e. God) always existed and that the UM did nothing much other than organize the preexisting world.
Spinoza believed that the world always existed and that the world and everything in it was God (thoroughgoing pantheism), eliminating Aristotle's distinction.
Both of these theologies dodge the obvious question: where does the world come from if God was not its author?
That seems likely, unless he follows in the footsteps of the long-lived Bertrand Russell.
I do not believe this re-cantation. It is a restatement of an old position and DOES NOT ADDRESS THE ISSUES in last week's story.
Last week's story dealt with the origin of life and *not* with the big bang.
Flew is not that shoddy!
You'll notice that he also takes the Aristotle/Spinoza dodge.Aristotle believed that the world always existed and the Unmoved Mover (i.e. God) always existed and that the UM did nothing much other than organize the preexisting world.
Spinoza believed that the world always existed and that the world and everything in it was God (thoroughgoing pantheism), eliminating Aristotle's distinction.
Both of these theologies dodge the obvious question: where does the world come from if God was not its author?
Your last question seems to ignore the points you made earlier about the world having always existed. If the world (i.e., physical being of some sort) has always existed, the question, 'Where does the world come from?', is already answered.
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