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.
No it's not. Dinosaurs leave fossils and with cladistic research one can determine their evolution. Plenty of early religions left written records with all sorts of claims and they aren't proof either. If they were one could make the case for the existence of Baal.
One has faith or one needs proof. Take your pick
Dinosaurs and mammals have overlapped for their entire histories, except that the dinos dropped out of the picture. This is not news. Until the dinos (among other life forms) dropped out in a big extinction event 65 million years ago, mammals were prevented from exploring a a lot of niches. We finally found a mammal old enough but still big enough to have eaten a smallish dinosaur. This is news of a sort, but doesn't overthrow anything much except to point out that some mammals were exploring predation of animals bigger than insects.
IOW, you're playing Twist and Shout, waving a minor factoid around like it's the fall of the Evolutionary Empire. Doesn't look very honest.
You are one of these evolutionists insisting that there is near infinite amount of transitional animals in the fossil record, right?
"Near infinite" is not predicted. "Plenty more than in Darwin's day" is known to be true.
Now has evolution stopped? If not, can you point me to any "transistional" trans-species LIVING, BREATHING animals that I may take a look at?
Why do we seem to need a whole new flu vaccine every year? Why can't we re-use last year's?
And while you're at it, please provide me with ONE example of a mutation that ADDED information to an animals' genetic code.
The final escape: "One must not impute purpose to the Designer." (Unless, that is, the Designer's design doesn't look too botched-up.)
Sorry, but evidence is evidence.
Just so you will understand the term:
Main Entry: 1ev£i£dence
Pronunciation: ‚e-v„-d„n(t)s, -v„-ƒden(t)s
Function: noun
Date: 14th century
1 a : an outward sign : indicationb : something that furnishes proof : testimony; specifically : something legally submitted to a tribunal to ascertain the truth of a matter
2 : one who bears witness; especially : one who voluntarily confesses a crime and testifies for the prosecution against his accomplices
-in evidence1 : to be seen : conspicuous ²trim lawns T areeverywhere in evidence—
so for your purposes, the ravings of a lunatic, the mumbled dreams of a 3 year-old and the testimony of a drunk are evidence simply because they said the words. Fine. There now can be evidence for anything so where are you, logically?
You must weigh each piece of evidence as to credibility.
You discard some. You take others under advisement and you find others to be credible.
Even if evidence is false, it is still evidence.
Oh dear--if the sun rising behind the mountain, or the glimpse of an iridescent throated hummingbird returning to the place it was hatched after thousands of miles of flight are not to be studied--And instead, decades of pouring over old teeth and bones to be studied--excuse me if my attention span begins to fail. Life is too short!
I am not here to engage in an endless discussion of cirular reasoning. I worship a Creator and there is my joy in His handiwork. I don't think the evolution you speak of (as if it were a person!) can ever raise the heart to equal joy.
I think, after a long walk, you're making my point. The evidence some people seek can be just as easily false as true. No human has any basis to judge the relative reliability of evidence for G-d's existence, One has either faith or one wants proof. Take your pick.
There is evidence that supports faith is my point.
One of these days you must tell me how you do this.
And you have absolutely no way to evaluate the validity of what you accept as evidence. No one else does either with reference to G-d. You can have faith or you can look for elusive proof. Take your pick
I guess we are talking about two different things.
and you are quite wrong. I love to study the past very much. Truth from all ages is extremely exciting and uplifting. An old worn out nonsensical "theory" however, stuck in Darwin's 1800's, is excrutiatingly boring (to say the least).
But I shan't argue with you. May you find the truth you seek in all your studying. I applaud your curious mind, perseverence, and hard studying. May it bring you to the purposeof life, and not merely knowledge.
Blessings...
I too think that's the reason they're ignoring it.
Let me first say that I do not believe that most, or even many, of today's believers in evolution hold to such a belief because they want to get jiggy.
However...to deny that a lot of people like (and promote) evolution because it eliminate's God's influence is naive at best. Take this example:
"Christianity has fought, still fights, and will fight science to the desperate end over evolution, because evolution destroys utterly and finally the very reason Jesus' earthly life was supposedly made necessary. Destroy Adam and Eve and the original sin, and in the rubble you will find the sorry remains of the son of god. Take away the meaning of his death. If Jesus was not the redeemer that died for our sins, and this is what evolution means, then Christianity is nothing."
G. Richard Bozarth, "The Meaning of Evolution", American Atheist, 20 Sept. 1979, p. 30
I submit it is not a case of Christians fighting science, but a case of non-christians fighting Christ.
I suppose there are people who think of Christianity as one team in some kind of cosmic football game -- best to be on the winning side, you know. Wouldn't want to be in the locker room if we lose.
But it is possible to to accept the message of Jesus in your heart, unconditionally, win or lose, because it is right.
God created the second law of thermodynamics, too.
It is remarkable, the similarity of this expression, to C.S. Lewis' repeated reference to God as the 'Cosmic Sadist', in his A Grief Observed, for profoundly sad reasons my favorite Lewis book.
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