Weighing the Evidence: An Atheist Abandons Atheism

BreakPoint with Charles Colson ^ | January 10, 2005 | Charles Colson

[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.

[Michael_Michaelangelo]

ID and creationists are the same. They use the Bible against science.

Do you have a clue as to what ID is? Have you read any of the literature?

[narby]

Bravo, Bravo, (whistle, whistle, clap, clap), Bravo

Hope you don't mind if I steal a tagline from your grand work.

[narby]

I have told you pointedly that your exegesis of text is poor. I personally am not going to spend the long time it would take to give you classes on proper hermeneutics.

I would think you would enjoy educating me about my poor examination of Genesis. If you could. But apparently you can't.

You can't explain how light and darkness can come before the sources of such things, without concluding that the sequence is irrelevant to the meaning.

You can't explain how there are two different creation stories in the Bible, where man was created twice. With both stories giving specific sequences (this happened, and then that happened), unless you acknowledge that the point of Genesis isn't to convey a litteral history if events.

And then you have the audacity to tell me that I cannot grasp the differences between ID and Creationism. As if that has any bearing on my critique of Genesis 1 & 2. Your attack is quite obviously meant to cover for your own inabilities to explain Genesis. You attack me, in order to avoid admiting you are wrong.

You are the one who can't explain the obvious failures of Genesis as litteral history. And neither you, nor any other ID/Creationist on this post will even attempt it.

[VadeRetro]

Among the many joys of your post, finally a study providing an answer to Feduccia's ostrich embryo study. The latter is just an instance of a misleading, anomalous data point. That's why science reasons from a preponderance of evidence. You've given a nice flavor of where that preponderance stacks.

[Michael_Michaelangelo]

Hey, want to see an evolutionary sequence from fish to elephants? If a fish to an elephant is illustrative enough to address your question, then here you go (all of the listed specimens are actual fossils):

Are you on talkorigins', or PatrickHenry's payroll?

Hunt's 'evolutionary sequences' leaves a lot to be desired, as does most of the evolution fairy tales y'all love to tell. Here are a few critiques for the lurkers , so they can draw their own conclusions.

"Transitional Vertebrate Fossils"

So called Transition from fish to amphibians

Transitional Forms?

Horse series (transitional fossil series?)

Fossils and DNA

[steve-b]

Also, macro and micro evolution are the same process of allele frequency changes in populations over time. To insist that one can occur and the other can't is nonsense.

This "distinction" is simply an ad hoc categorization designed to avoid evidence once it has become impossible to evade any other way.

It's similar to the "distinction" between "a serious charge if proven true" and "not rising to the level of impeachment" used by Clinton's defenders. Any charge that could still be denied by questioning the evidence could be admitted to the former category; anything that had been nailed on Clinton beyond doubt was assigned to the latter category (and thus didn't really count). We saw the Lewinsky affair shifted from the former to the latter before our very eyes after the DNA-stained blue dress surfaced (just as we saw Eohippus --> Equus move from "macro" to "micro" once the fossil record was filled in too thoroughly to deny any longer).

[UnChained]

" They apparently think that God could snap his fingers, and there was a new creature. But they don't think God could have created a life system that would modify itself over time. Creationism is such a simplistic view of God."

I agree that God "could" have used evolution but the only record we have says that He didn't. On the contrary, God regularly used supernatural acts as His calling card in the Old and New Testaments.

If you believe that He used natural mechanisms to accomplish certain ends, well and good, so do I. But I believe that the Creation events occurred as recorded.

There's nothing simplistic about my world view. I'm 54 years old and fairly intelligent and I assure you that I've given it all a lot of thought.

[steve-b]

Theistic evolution is the belief that God is capable of making a pool shot that sinks all the balls after a series of collisions.

Literal creationism is the belief that God's skills are more along the lines of placing each ball in a pocket by hand.

[Michael_Michaelangelo]

Micro vs. Macro

Proponents of evolution often attempt to discredit creation by pointing to occurrences of microevolution, such as speciation, adaptation, etc. To the evolutionist, microevolution is vindication for their belief in the much larger macroevolution. Their belief is that if these microevolutionary changes have enough time to accumulate, then eventually this will lead to a macroevolutionary change. And therefore, in their way of thinking, if microevolution is a well established fact, macroevolution must logically be an established fact as well.

[Michael_Michaelangelo]

The Five Crises in Evolutionary Theory, by Dr. Ray Bohlin

Link

1. The unsubstantiation of a Darwinian mechanism of evolution

2. The total failure of origin of life studies to produce a workable model

3. The inability of evolutionary mechanism to explain the origin of complex adaptations

4. The bankruptcy of the blind watchmaker hypothesis

5. The biological evidence that the rule in nature is morphological stability over time and not constant change.

Raymond G. Bohlin is a graduate of the University of Illinois (B.S., zoology), North Texas State University (M.S., population genetics), and the University of Texas at Dallas (M.S., Ph.D., molecular biology)

[steve-b]

I agree that God "could" have used evolution but the only record we have says that He didn't.

On the contrary, the one reliable record we have (that contained in the physical evidence) says just the opposite.

One might dispute the assertion that physical evidence is more reliable than documentary evidence. In that case, there's no point in arguing, just as there is no point in arguing with the jurors who found O. J. Simpson's protestations of innocence more convincing than the crime scene forensics.

[VadeRetro]

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... Etc. etc. etc.

The actual text of your strawman objections lies shredded already, and nothing more be said of that. But here's where I like to comment on the wrong-headedness of inventing such a cavalcade of nonsense in the first place, trying to argue a thing as impossible in the face of obvious evidence that it has happened.

There are fossils all over the place on the spectrum between bird and dinosaur. Several of these are still argued back and forth as to classification, "bird" bin or "dinosaur" bin. If anything, we have an embarrassment of riches, evidence that the tree of bird evolution was very bushy with tons of extinct branches and lots of failed evolutionary "experiments."

The following forelimb is on an admitted "bird."

Is that a wing, or a dinosaur forelimb? Against such obvious evidence of thing A coming from Thing B, what's the difference if no one can make you see how it's possible?

Your arguments remind me of attempted creationist "proofs" that it is impossible for a bumblebee to fly. You want too much for your refusal to understand how a thing can happen.

My real problem with how the "science" of ID works, however, is that you don't seem to be guilty of practicing it incorrectly. You're doing it about the way Behe does it.

[weenie]

Nice analogy...

[Sola Veritas]

"Your attack is quite obviously meant to cover for your own inabilities to explain Genesis. You attack me, in order to avoid admiting you are wrong."

I told you the truth. If you want to think I am lying to you, then so be it. Go in peace.

[Lurking Libertarian]

Brilliant post.

[narby]

I told you the truth. If you want to think I am lying to you, then so be it. Go in peace.

As you are going, having failed utterly to explain the problems with Genesis. Or to even attempt to do so. As you probably recognize that it is impossible.

I think this may be a good tack in future crevo threads. Since IDers are merely Biblical litteralists who PC their arguments for public consumption, forcing them to explain the unexplainable in Genesis might just get them to think that perhaps they are wrong.

[Michael_Michaelangelo]

I think this may be a good tack in future crevo threads.

Only if you want people to think you're ignorant. Most everyone knows that ID isn't based on the Bible. People get confused because the evo warriors keep spreading BS throughout the WWW.

Questions and Answers about Intelligent Design

4. Is intelligent design based on the Bible? No. The intellectual roots of intelligent design theory are varied. Plato and Aristotle both articulated early versions of design theory, as did virtually all of the founders of modern science. Indeed, most scientists until the latter part of the nineteenth century accepted some form of design. The scientific community largely rejected design in the early twentieth century after neo-Darwinism claimed to be able to explain the emergence of biological complexity through the unintelligent process of natural selection acting on random mutations. However, new research and discoveries in such fields as physics, cosmology, biochemistry, genetics, and paleontology have caused a growing number of scientists and science theorists to question neo-Darwinism and propose design as the best explanation for the existence of specified complexity in the natural world.

[narby]

Most everyone knows that ID isn't based on the Bible.

I just love this that the utter failure of anyone to step up and explain Genesis is turned into MY failure to recognize some situation about ID literature.

I feel safe in saying that most people who believe in ID do so because they are religious. And that most people who defend ID, do so for the same reason, even if they refuse to acknowledge it publicly.

ID has quite obviously been created as a cover for Bible litteralists, protests to the contrary notwithstanding.

I will continue to respond to ID/creationists by pointing out the self evident failure of Genesis to be a litteral history. They'll get the message, even if they refuse to acknowledge it as you have done.

[microgood]

because...? Oh, right, anti-evolutionists don't *need* to support their assertions, since whatever half-assed thing they choose to believe is "obviously" true...

It is speculation because it has never been proven. An instance of Punctuated Equilibrium has never been observed by a human.

there's a great deal of evidence supporting punctuated equilibrium -- including simple mathematical analysis of the statistical processes involved -- but I won't confuse you with the facts, since it seems to just set you off every time.

I read your link - there was an explanation of the the theory and other linkages but no facts to support it.

But just for fun, please state, in your own words, what you think punctuated equilibrium means. You should never pass up a chance to reveal your arrogant misunderstandings on this topic.

Although this theory was not there when I went to high school (I guess I was lied to when they taught us evolution), I see it as basically that species remain unchanged for most of there existences and then larger or species changes occur rapidly and that the old species become extinct in the process and the new one arises with radically different characteristics. BTW, there is enough arrogance in all directions on these crevo posts to pave a highway to the next galaxy.

With all due respect, the hell you do. Every time I confront you with facts, you just start blustering making excuses for why you don't have to actually consider them, and why you shouldn't have to "waste your time" doing reality checks on your preconceptions.

You never confront me with facts. You do one of two things: tell me I am too stupid to understand or send me a zillion links with explanations of theories but not the facts supporting them. This is why macroevolution should not be taught in high school. The facts as you say, are only decipherable by you biologists and since you cannot explain it to a lay person, why waste the students time? Besides, if PE gets shot down, in the next thirty or forty years, do all the students that learned PE get their money back?

Face it -- you're unable to actually deal with the contents of the material I post, so all you can do is post wild taunts as if that somehow trumps the facts.

This is the part where if I dare disagree with your "facts" I am an idiot. This is your signature characteristic post. From your Tolstoy quote you seem to assume that I disagree with evolution because of things I have believed my whole life conflict with that. You could not be more wrong. It is only in the last two or three years that I have come to doubt evolutionary theory. I believed it most of my life. I still find microevolution compelling, but am skeptical of speciation based on my readings the last couple of years.

But don't lie about the scientific evidence, or misrepresent the field, or get snotty about things you actually understand very little about, or people are going to call you on it, as several have done in this thread.

OK, I will not get snotty if you evolutionists will admit that evolution, especially macroevolution is a theory which may or may not be true, and is not that absolute truth about the origin and development of mankind. I would be happy if you would just state that this is the best theory we have with the amount of evidence we have but we cannot know this with any kind of certainty. But I do not believe, because of the arrogance of evolutionists, that this will never happen. And so millions of children will be taught either hopeless monsters, PE, or whatever comes around the bend next.

[D Edmund Joaquin]

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.”

LOL. Which is no acknowledgement at all. His god has short little arms