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 arguedincluding in debates with an atheist-turned-Christian named C. S. Lewisthat there was a presumption of atheism, that is, the existence of a creator could not be proved.
But hes 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 matterthat 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 Deistthat 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 despotscosmic Saddam Husseins.
But a crack is beginning to develop in his opinion that God hasnt spoken through Scripture. When he reads the first chapter of Genesis, Flew says hes 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.
Silly shubi -- I'm simply asking you to define your terms, that we may conduct our discussion on common ground.
Evolution is the change in allele frequency in populations over time.
OK. Of course, there's more to it than that, as you're well aware. How does your version of the theory of evolution say that these changes occur?
Creationism is the rejection of the above, plus "literal" belief in Bible passages in Genesis.
According to this definition, I am not a "creationist." A sufficient penance for your sin would be an effort to deflate your ego to merely human dimensions.
>>I didn't think you knew what evolution meant. No creationist does. <<
Holy cow man! You really believe that?
Actually, my response was sincere. When you said "no creationist does" I just found it hard to resepct anything you said on the subject since such a statement comes from either blind ignorance or blind docmatic belief, neither of which strengthens your position in a debate.
I was honestly dumbfounded by your willingness to make such a ludicrously biased and demonstrably unfounded statement.
Oops. Sorry.
The Golden retreiver and other selectively bred living things have a relationship to evolution in that Darwin used them as examples of how natural selection takes place.
If you are saying man is an intelligent designer and that is the extent of the ID claim, I agree with you.
Instead of playing games, just state what your position is.
The definition I gave is the technical definition of evolution. It is not the definition of the Theory of Evolution. There is a difference.
Are you a creationist?
What does evolution mean?
Well, I've seen the Corvette evolve...
That's not the extent of the ID claim I'm making. I am saying that it is improper for "science" to exclude intelligent agents from the set of valid hypotheses for the evidence we can observe. And yet, because it's basically a search for naturalistic processes, that's exactly what "science" demands. The primary reason I question that exclusion is that man is an intelligent designer and, because of that exception to the going-in assumptions, it is not possible to rule out intelligent design (from whatever agents) as a more general hypothesis.
The Golden retreiver and other selectively bred living things have a relationship to evolution in that Darwin used them as examples of how natural selection takes place.
The problem being, of course, that it's precisely not how natural selection takes place. It may use the same tools, but the process is quite obviously different in the sense that the one is random (i.e., there is no specific goal to successive mutations), and the other is performed and enforced with specific goals in mind.
The question remains, then: how would you design a genetic sort of test that would show the guiding influence in such cases? You probably can't, without introducing the a priori knowledge that breeders were active in the process.
Which again brings up a weakness in the scientific paradigm. If we were somehow to mask that a priori information from the available evidence, how would scientists explain the proliferation of identifiable dog breeds? The important point is: any hypothesis that did not include intelligent agents (breeders) would be wrong. And any paradigm that excluded intelligent agents from the set of possible hypotheses would be incomplete.
When we extend the question to direct genetic manipulation, which is becoming more and more common, could scientists design a test to detect the presence of human involvement that did not rely on a priori knowledge? More importantly, would scientists include "intelligent agents" in their solution space?
The problem is simply that science tends to permit only one possible "guiding mechanism" for what happens in nature, and that's one of the issues driving this debate. It's clearly not a tenable claim as far as human activities are concerned.
I'm not saying that there's anything intrinsically wrong with the assumption that naturalistic processes are at work -- it's clearly quite successful in many fields (including my own). However, it is still nothing more than a general assumption, which we know to be not universally valid (again, even in my own field).
"I am saying that it is improper for "science" to exclude intelligent agents from the set of valid hypotheses for the evidence "
Science doesn't exclude any hypotheses. However, to rise to the status of theory, there must be a convincing volume of evidence. There is no evidence for ID. You have been unable to present any, except hand-waving speculation and sophistry.
Evolution is a fact and the theory of evolution explains that fact. There is no need to hypothesize a designer when the theory is sufficient to explain speciation and the life diversity on Earth.
As far as creation is concerned, I hypothesize a creator. But I don't think he has to continually intervene in the process he started with the Big Bang.
Let's be realistic. The argument against ID is that there is no evidence to back it up. However, "acceptable" scientific evidence is supposed to be in the form of repeatable experiments observing naturalistic processes. As such, it seems that the threshold for "evidence" of ID is automatically insurmountable.
There is no evidence for ID. You have been unable to present any, except hand-waving speculation and sophistry.
Hm. Well, you've already conceded that humans practice ID. And I note that you've neglected to answer the questions about, say, how the Theory of Evolution would explain dog breeds without invoking the concept of a designer. So for the moment, I'd say that what you dismiss as "sophistry" is more a matter of your dancing around the point, which is that while evolution may be a useful theory, it is also demonstrably incomplete.
As far as creation is concerned, I hypothesize a creator.
Fine. But can you also admit that, logically, a creator capable of creating an entire universe, is probably capable of meddling with processes within that creation? And if you happen also to be Christian (I don't know if you are or not), then one would have to wonder how it would be possible to profess a hands-off God.
But I don't think he has to continually intervene in the process he started with the Big Bang.
Two problems here.
First: what you "think" is merely an opinion. An assumption, if you will. It's fine to assume it, but the assumption has to be admitted, and tested.
Second: there is no requirement for "continual" intervention. Intervention at discrete points is also possible.
"Let's be realistic. The argument against ID is that there is no evidence to back it up. However, "acceptable" scientific evidence is supposed to be in the form of repeatable experiments observing naturalistic processes. "
Sorry, your premise is incorrect. When you figure out what is wrong with it, get back to me.
Unable to distinguish between "mercy" and "license", eh?
I suggest that career prospects and intellectual pride are part of it sometimes as well.
Cheers!
The same applies by definition to criticisms of Genesis...or of any Biblical material for that matter;
come to think of it, of any writing by any time or place not sharing the philosophical presuppositions of our culture. :-)
Full Disclosure: Those folks dressed up in Zoot Suits in--what was it-- the 1920's or so, sure thought they were the epitome of fashion. But they look like world-class dorks now! 80 years from now, people will be laughing at US.
By extension, it's a fair bet that the same type of thing will occur in philosophy.
Cheers!
Off topic, but--YOWZA!--I love your tagline there!
Cheers!
Thank you!
Bump for later...getting offline now.
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