Posted on 01/10/2005 2:47:28 PM PST by Mr. Silverback
Antony Flew, the 81-year-old British philosophy professor who taught at Oxford and other leading universities, became an atheist at age 15. Throughout his long career he argued—including in debates with an atheist-turned-Christian named C. S. Lewis—that there was a “presumption of atheism,” that is, the existence of a creator could not be proved.
But he’s now been forced to face the evidence. It comes from the Intelligent Design movement, led by Dr. Phillip Johnson and particularly the work of Michael Behe, the Lehigh biochemist who has proven the “irreducible complexity” of the human cell structure. Though eighty-one years old, Flew has not let his thinking fossilize, but has faithfully followed his own dictum to “go where the evidence leads.”
Christian philosophy professor Gary Habermas of Liberty University conducted an interview with Flew that will be published in the winter issue of Philosophia Christi, the journal of the Evangelical Philosophical Society and Biola University. Flew told Habermas that a pivotal point in his thinking was when he realized two major flaws in the various theories of how nature might have created itself. First, he recognized that evolutionary theory has no reasonable explanation for “the first emergence of living from non-living matter”—that is, the origin of life. Second, even if a living cell or primitive animal had somehow assembled itself from non-living chemicals, he reasoned it would have no ability to reproduce.
Flew told Habermas, “This is the creature, the evolution of which a truly comprehensive theory of evolution must give some account. Darwin himself was well aware that he had not produced such an account. It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design.”
Flew has, thus, become a Deist—that is, he acknowledges God as creator but not as a personal deity. In his opinion, “There is no room either for any supernatural revelation of that God or any transactions between that God and individual human beings.” In fact, he told a group last May that he considers both the Christian God and the Islamic God to be “omnipotent Oriental despots—cosmic Saddam Husseins.”
But a crack is beginning to develop in his opinion that God hasn’t spoken through Scripture. When he reads the first chapter of Genesis, Flew says he’s impressed that a book written thousands of years ago harmonizes with twenty-first-century science. “That this biblical account might be scientifically accurate,” says Flew, “raises the possibility that it is revelation.” A book containing factual statements that no human knew about at the time of writing seems to argue that the authors must have had coaching from the Creator.
The evidence is there for all who will look, as his one-time adversary C. S. Lewis discovered, and as more and more thinking intellectuals are discovering today. So it is that Antony Flew, perhaps the most famous philosopher of atheism, is just a step or two away from the kingdom.
Thank God and his son Jesus that we do not.
ID is pretty much the same as creation science. If some atheistist choses to believe in ID, that is his problem.
ID is based on the literalist interpretation of the Bible, your sophistry not withstanding.
IIRC, this was a personal statement by the current Pope, not by the Church itself. If the Church has declared there is no conflict, then they are dead wrong. My point remains valid and I will make it clear: Christian orthodoxy is that the Universe was created ex nihilo in six days, and any doctrine that conflicts with that is a rewrite.
But my point stands that Christians do not agree on the meaning of Genesis vs. Evolution.
There are people who call themselves Christians (and may even be going to Heaven, though I sorely doubt it) who will tell you following Christ means standing outside the funeral of an AIDS victims harassing the mourners, and if you do it standing on an American flag, so much the better.
There are people who call themselves Christians (and may even be going to Heaven, though I sorely doubt it) who will tell you following Christ means elevating those who practice perversions clearly condemned in Scripture to the highest offices of the Church, and that to disagree with them is to be as unChristian and hateful as any Nazi.
Guess what? They're both wrong.
Guess who's right? Jesus.
‘But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female’ (Mark 10:6).
Jesus also believed in the Flood, etc. So, the idea of theistic evolution is not only inconsistent with Scripture and Christian orthodoxy, it requires that one disagree with Christ on a crucial point of Christian doctrine.
I'm told that the chief editor of the Encyclopedie Francais remarked that evolution is a fairy tale for grown-ups. Theistic evolution is a fairy tale for Christian grown-ups, and it is a much more far-fetched fairy tale than evolution itself could ever be.
sThe Theory of Evolution does not contain God in it, because it does not contain creation.
rThis is a good example of my point. You have basically said that God would enter into evolution only before evolution actually occurred. This tacitly assumes that evolution runs "on its own," and that there was no intelligent interaction within the development of species at any point.
No. Biology doesn't care whether God is there or not. Evolution does run on its own. If there was some intervention by God, how would you tell?
sThe only way this can be a "debate" at all is for the creationists to create a strawman by putting creation into the theory and then arguing against it.
rOr, by the same token, one could automatically deny the possibility that life on Earth was affected by any intelligent interaction ever -- be it from God or some other source -- and pretend they're being scientific. ;-)
What scientific evidence to you have for any intervention in the process of evolution over all these millions of years? You can't have any, because science cannot consider anything but natural processes. If God intervened, it would look the same as a natural process. It is immaterial to biology.
sThere is no "assumption" there is no God in anything. It is simply that God is not needed to support the theory.
rSurely you're aware of the irony inherent in these two sentences.....
There is no irony there. Sorry. Creation of life is not in the Theory, so creationists need have no fear that their God is disproved by biology, unless they think that day is only 24 hours, that man was specially created or that Noah really did preserve life on Earth.
Fortunately for us rational theists, we don't need to believe nonsense for God to exist. If God required us to believe nonsense, He would not be much of a God.
sIf He was, it would be a miracle not science.
rOh? Suppose that, rather than God, it was one of Fred Hoyle's aliens. Would it still be a miracle, or would it be science in that case?
Miracle of sorts. There is no evidence to support individual creation of each species or "kind".
sIf God is influencing evolution it would not be noticeable, anyway.
rThis makes no sense as written. What you may mean is that one couldn't tell the difference between "natural" evolution, or evolution guided by God (or some non-God alien intelligence). Perhaps -- but that doesn't mean it can't happen. In fact, we know for a fact that it does happen, because we humans have been guiding evolution of plants and animals literally for millenia.
Since it makes no difference, the postulation of some hidden guidance is unnecessary. Breeds are not species.
But with modern genetic engineering, the changes would be
noticeably different than natural processes. That is not true for your assumption that there must be something guiding evolution just because you want there to be.
You could be absolutely right; I'm an ignorant slob with no learning.
OTOH I could be someone who has decades of both age and study on you.
Yet all you can do is offer an insult. Funny, when I present a conservative argument to liberals that's exactly what they do; offer up how stupid I am.
However I will grant that if your study of evolutionary biology leads you to an opinion different than mind I don't view you as any less intelligent or educated than I am, just that we see a theory in two different directions.
There are two entirely different creation stories. Man was created first in Gen 1:27, and then again in Gen 2:7. There are other duplications as well, showing that these are two stories.
God may have personally carved the 10 commandments at the burning bush. But Genesis comes from oral stories passed among the tribes of Israel and eventually transcribed by Moses. Genisis 1 and Genisis 2:4 begin two of these stories.
The sequences between the first and second creation stories are different. That demonstrates that the Bible cannot be a source for any litteral meaning on the creation, since it litterally disagrees with itself. Hardly surprising, since by definition no man witnessed these events.
Most interesting are that in Gen 1:3 God creates light, but doesn't get around to creating the Sun and Moon until Gen 1:16. And creationists say there are "holes in Evolution"! LOL!
My conclusion is that the meaning of Genesis is "God did it". There is plenty of room for God to have created the universe in basically the way that science describes.
Comments?
Genisis = Genesis
please add me to your ping list
It says somewhere in the Bible that God will reveal himself more and more as time goes by...with the discovery of DNA and Intelligent Design...the information has always been there, but we are just at the tip of the iceberg in discovering it.
Blessed are those that have not seen and still believe...I keep thinking that in our technology age, our faith (or lack of it) requires us to have so many physical evidences of God's existance.
If I'm so dense, then please enlighten me as to these "ID" cults running around. Who is their "Jim Jones"? This is the most laughable accusation against Creationists or "ID" believers I've ever heard. Of course if you demonize people, it's easy to dismiss what they say out of hand. I guess all evolutionists are "in the same vein" as Stalin, who was a communist athiest and obviously didn't believe in Creation.
The discovery institute started this mess with "creation science" 25 years ago. Many of the same professional creationists are still at the old game, simply shifting their semantics to "ID" and abandoning the 6000 year old earth nonsense because they couldn't sell it anymore.
Sometime soon, I predict they will abandon their attack on "macro" evolution too, and simply say that science has things about right, just that God had his fingers in the game. But gullible Christians will still send them money.
"ID is based on the literalist interpretation of the Bible, your sophistry not withstanding."
Once again you are making a statement that is not based upon fact. Isn't "fact" something you hold dear?
I cannot speak definitively upon the subject of ID in that I have no affiliation with groups that push it, and have not read their writings. I have been associated in the past (while in college) and have very recently reestablished connections with Creationists - specifically the Institute for Creation Research (ICR). ICR creationists like myself indeed do believe in a literal interpretation of scripture. However, I am pretty sure that all ID proponents do not. That is not sophistry, it is fact.
If it comforts you to resort to stereotypes and strawmen, then so be it. When you get these basic distinctions clear in your mind, then maybe we can carry on a fruitful discussion. Although, I doubt it because will are polar opposites. Whatever, I see no further use in continuing a discussion with you when you continue to state an untruth about the relationship of IDers and Creationists.
"Here's a a wikipedia entry about him."
Thanks, this answered what I wanted to know. He is a "theistic evolutionist" and not a "creationist." I have been trying to explain to some here that ID proponents and Creationists are two separate groups.
Well, trying to prove the concepts of evolution with a non-evolutionary model isn't very effective. LOL
Rigorously define "more complex organization".
I did. See the brief list of examples.
Evolutionary processes require three things in order to work: 1) reproduction, 2) variation, 3) selection.
Great! So why don't we see evolution at work with those 3 things? Where are all the transisitional freaks and mutants? We just can't seem to find any living examples, or any in the fossil record. God must be hiding the evidence to test our faith, right? ROFL
Do you REALLY believe that fish can transform into an amphibian or a dinosaur into a bird or an ape into a man? Let's take a brief look at ONE example. What structural and physiological transformations must occur to change, say a dinosaur, into a bird? Well, WINGS would be the most obvious. The proposed ancestors of birds are thought to have walked on their hind legs. Their diminutive forelimbs had digits similar to a hand, but consisting only of digits one, two, and three. Bird forelimbs consist of digits two, three, and four. Today, most hold that ground-dwelling theropods learned to run fast and jump to catch insects and eventually used arms with frayed scales to fly. (Ok, I'm trying not laugh here, but it is NOT easy!) But flight requires fully formed, interlocking feathers and hollow bones, not to mention the flight muscles and keeled sternum to anchor the muscles. And of course wings are made of feather, which are not at all similar to scales. Even if scales were frayed, they would not be interlocking and impervious to air as are feathers. (Ok, I'm flat out laughing now) Actually, feathers are more similar to hair follicles than scales. Birds have delicate, hollow bones to lighten their weight while dinosaurs had solid bones. For example, the heavy tail of dinosaurs (needed for balance on two legs) would prohibit any possible flight (Can't you just picture a big dino running and trying to fly and looking back disdainfully at his heavy tail? LOL). And besides, the theropods were "lizard-hipped" dinosaurs, not "bird-hipped" as would be expected for bird ancestors. Ah, let's see...Oh yes, birds are warmblooded with exceptionally high metabolism and food demands. While dinosaur metabolism is in question, all modern reptiles are cold-blooded with a more lethargic life style. Birds are unique among land-dwelling vertebrates in that they don't breathe in and out. The air flows continually in a one-directional loop supporting the bird's high metabolism. Reptilian respiration is entirely different, more like that in mammals. The soft parts of birds and dinosaurs, in addition to the lungs, are totally different. A recent "mummified" dinosaur, with soft tissue fossilized, proved to be quite like a crocodile, and not at all like a bird.
Thus, the dinosaur-to-bird transition is blocked by many major obstacles, not just the acquisition of feathers. It gets even worse, for in order to make the transition, most if not all of the definitive characteristics must be acquired simultaneously. They all must be present or else none serves a valid purpose. Now if you want to believe in such leaps of faith, go right ahead, but YOU are the one off the scientific reservation, not I.
You may want to read up on Dr. Michael Denton. He's an agnostic but a decided non-evolutionist who compiled a chart on "The Adequacy of the Fossil Record" in his book, Evolution: A Theory In Crisis, by comparing the number of living types to fossil types, gleaning information from Romer's classic book, Vertebrate Paleontology. He found that 97.7% of living orders of terrestrial vertebrates are found as fossils. Approximately 95% are marine invertebrates, with the rest being mostly plants, fish, and insects. When we look at the invertebrates, we see separate and distinct categories (i.e., clams, corals, trilobites, etc.) existing in the earliest strata with NOT A HINT of ancestors or of intermediates. We find clams by the trillions, with a lot of variety among them, but no evolution. Furthermore, we have no idea how vertebrate fish could have arisen from any invertebrate. Where there are good data, we see no evolution. The fossil record is voluminous and apparently substantially complete. Yet no evolution is seen. Again, is this God testing our faith in evolution?
If you remember nothing else, never forget that Mutations never add information to the DNA code, as would be necessary for major evolutionary advancement. End of sentence. End of evolution.
You know... I said that as a kind and friendly gesture... Yet you - a "Christian" - throw in my face as as a cut, full of sarcasm.
I simply quoted you. If you think those words sound harsh, then perhaps you shouldn't have typed them in the first place.
The one that states that all existing diverse species of life forms originated from common ancestry.
Oh well, whatever. lol Spin things how you wish, if you can't, or wont, even distinguish between what he was saying and saying, "God is Irrelevant", it's no use anyway.
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