Posted on 11/03/2007 5:58:54 PM PDT by shrinkermd
THE STARTLING ARTICLE appeared on Dec. 9, 2004. A British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion of atheism for more than a half-century has changed his mind, Richard Ostling of The Associated Press wrote. He now believes in God more or less based on scientific evidence and says so on a video released Thursday.
At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A superintelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature, Flew said in a telephone interview from England.
The video released Thursday was Has Science Discovered God? a DVD of a May 2004 conversation, held in a television studio at New York University, between Flew and two popular advocates of theism, the Orthodox Jewish physicist Gerald Schroeder and the Christian philosopher John Haldane.
There are long stretches of Schroeder, sitting behind what looks like an anchormans desk, lecturing an attentive Flew on matters like the unlikelihood that an infinite number of monkeys typing randomly would ever produce a Shakespearean sonnet.
(He is rebutting Stephen Hawking, who argues in A Brief History of Time that nature, given enough time, can perform the wondrous feats that credulous people attribute to God.) Schroeder also talks about the Cambrian explosion of animal species hundreds of millions of years ago, which he says happened too suddenly to lack some supernatural guidance. Haldane chimes in to argue that certain human capabilities, like language and reproduction, can be explained only by a higher intelligence....Many of the greatest scientists of all time believed that the intelligence of the universe, its laws, points to an intelligence that has no limitation.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Unfortunately, Yahweh won’t tell, even after judging. It’s the ultimate voyeur:
sees all, knows all,
does nothing.
.
This isn’t any big surprise. At 81 he MUST be wondering what comes next. It’s easy to be an “athiest” when you are young and “bulletproof”.
There HAS to come a time when everyone wonders what happens after we die. If the “athiests” are right- we die and that’s all. Everything we did, everything we were means nothing. If the “NewAgers” are right, we reincarnate or join some “universal conscienceness”...or something...
Christians are the only ones who believe we have to account for the choices we make and that we answer to Someone. I understand that can be scary. And Christianity IS the only faith that says we WILL pay for those choices. It’s tough to imagine that there is actually something, or Someone, more important than precious little you.
Mark to watch the debate.
You signed up just to post this? The kitties smell troll bait.
As an atheist, (though not a Madlyn Murray O’Hare doctrinaire atheist)my problem has always been this:
If God created the universe and all that’s in it, who created God?
It’s a chicken and egg argument. Who can explain it?
“Dinesh D’Sousa of late has come to the conclusion that the way to confront the anti-theists and atheists who have begun to evangelize their anti-theism is through reason rather than simply scripture.”
I saw D’Sousa on Hannity and Colmes the other night, and I hear Hannity make maybe the stupidest comment I’ve ever heard a human utter. His comment spoke to how “these atheists” can deny the existence of God, how can they explain how the universe began?
My question is, how can Hannity explain it? What an a**hole. I generally find him to be pretty bright, but that put him down there with Johnny Edwards on the stupid meter.
Hannity knows that God made the universe. To deny God in light of all that He has accomplished makes one less than intelligent sounding.
God is a mystery. He has no beginning or end. He was not created and not bound by any "natural" laws.
bump
“If God created the universe and all thats in it, who created God?
God is a mystery. He has no beginning or end. He was not created and not bound by any “natural” laws.”
Any idea how stupid this sounds? You’ve in essence said, “He’s just there. God is just there”. That’s dumb. So if OJ said, “The body’s were just there”, he’s not guilty? WHERE IS THE EVIDENCE?
“Hannity knows that God made the universe. To deny God in light of all that He has accomplished makes one less than intelligent sounding.”
Prove that God accomplished anything. I’m not trying to be obtuse here, or an a-hole, I just don’t see the evidence. It doesn’t make sense.
Also understand that I will fight to the death for your right to believe what you want to believe. The Constitution grants you the right to believe, as it does for me not to believe.
It just doesn’t make sense.
>>That kind of change happens when the Messiah sets up the Kingdom of God on this earth, for His 1,000 year reign. That doesnt happen to be too far away, perhaps a few weeks, months or a few years. Were real close now...<<
You mean Humanity has been waiting more than two thousand years for a mere one-thousand-year reign? Seems kinda counter-intuitive.
What about Matthew 16:28?
Is it such a stupid comment ? Didn't you just use it to explain why there is no God ?
Let me explain:
When Creationists say that God existed from the beginning, and created everything else, they are defining things as simply as possible.
When evolutionists, materialists, and/or Darwinists say that the beginning was a giant explosion of time and energy, out of which everything evolved into the chaotic joy we see around us, they are simply being obfuscatory poopy heads.
Does that help?
Probability says it's impossible they would even come up with two paragraphs. They would bang out gibberish in eternity.
Patience, Grasshopper.
God, of course, would have no such constraints which puts science and mathematicians at a certain disadvantage. Such is life!
Which is why there are some scientists who posit a multiverse where infinite time and infinite space keeps the monkeys banging out complexity by random chance at their lesiure.
Given infinite time, space and monkeys the mathematical proof that they will type a sonnet is pretty simple. Unfortunately we are stuck with finite limits while God isn't. I know, I know, it isn't fair that science has to deal with the laws, time and space that the Good Lord gave them but there it is anyway.
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