Excerpt from: “There is a God, How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind”

_{Eric Hedin

December 23, 2022

Atheism, Intelligent Design}

Share: Facebook; Twitter; LinkedIn; Flipboard; Print; Email

Anthony Flew writes:

I now believe that the universe was brought into existence by an infinite Intelligence. I believe that this Universe’s intricate laws manifest what scientists have called the Mind of God. I believe that life and reproduction originate in a divine Source.

Why do I believe this, given that I expounded and defended atheism for more than half a century? The short answer is this: this is the world picture, as I see it, that has emerged from modern science. Science spotlights three dimensions of nature that point to God. The first is the fact that nature obeys laws. The second is the dimension of life, of intelligently organized and purpose-driven beings, which arose from matter. The third is the very existence of nature.

When I finally came to recognize the existence of a God, it was not a paradigm shift, because my paradigm remains, as Plato in his Republic scripted his Socrates to insist: “We must follow the argument wherever it leads.”

The leaders of science over the last hundred years, along with some of today’s most influential scientists, have built a philosophically compelling vision of a rational universe that sprang from a divine Mind. As it happens, this is the particular view of the world that I now find to be the soundest philosophical explanation….
Anthony Flew, “There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind,” (New York: Harper One, 2007).

The evidence that convinced “the world’s most notorious atheist” that God’s creative activity gave rise to the universe and life is the same evidence that Uncommon Descent has repeatedly presented from ongoing research findings across the scientific disciplines. What more could be said?

Comments

Why do electrons follow the laws?
Joel Primack, a cosmologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, once posed an interesting question to the physicist Neil Turok: “What is it that makes the electrons continue to follow the laws.” Turok was surprised by the question; he recognized its force. Something seems to compel physical objects to obey the laws of nature, and what makes this observation odd is just that neither compulsion nor obedience are physical ideas. [Berlinsky, 'The Devil's Delusion', p.132]
Origenes_{December 26, 2022
December
12
Dec
26
26
2022
11:28 PM
11
11
28
PM
PDT}

Seversky at 41, What is forcing? Can you force someone to love you? God will not force you to love Him.relatd_{December 26, 2022
December
12
Dec
26
26
2022
04:41 PM
4
04
41
PM
PDT}

To CD @9: You ask, "why would a perfect, eternal and transcendent being have the need to create lesser, imperfect beings, knowing full well that he or she or it would be consigning the lion’s share of those beings to eternal damnation? Seems pointless to me………" It's hard to know where to begin with answering your objections. Are you an atheist because you disagree with what you think you know about God? It seems like I also disagree with what you think you know about God. You imply that God's creation of humans seems pointless. I encourage you to undertake a careful reading of the Bible, which you have maybe done already. But maybe you've missed some essential elements. First of all, "God is love." He consigns no one to hell who loves. Is it pointless to love? To love can open one up to experiencing pain, but I would say that it is still better than not to love. The existence we have on Earth is not the end of the "love story." We are given just a glimpse of a "happily ever after" that so far transcends what we experience here that it will cause the deepest pain to seem a "light, momentary affliction."Caspian_{December 26, 2022
December
12
Dec
26
26
2022
04:36 PM
4
04
36
PM
PDT}

The laws of nature are real top-down 'skyhooks':
Sean Carroll: "A law of physics is a pattern that nature obeys without exception." James Trefil: "It [the principle of universality] says that the laws of nature we discover here and now in our laboratories are true everywhere in the universe and have been in force for all time." Paul C. Davies :"...to be a scientist, you had to have faith that the universe is governed by dependable, immutable, absolute, universal, mathematical laws of an unspecified origin. You've got to believe that these laws won't fail, that we won't wake up tomorrow to find heat flowing from cold to hot, or the speed of light changing by the hour. Over the years I have often asked my physicist colleagues why the laws of physics are what they are? ...The favorite reply is, 'There is no reason they are what they are--they just are.'" Emily Baldwin: "One of the most important numbers in physics, the proton-electron mass ratio, is the same in a galaxy six billion light years away as it is here on Earth, according to new research, laying to rest debate about whether the laws of nature vary in different places in the Universe." Paul Davies: “… but an important point here about these laws is physicists believe they really exist. That is to say that they're not just our inventions, we don't read the order into nature, we read it out of nature. We discover really existing regularities in the world about us. Because there is a school of thought that these laws, and indeed science in general, it's just a sort of cultural activity and that physicists have made these laws up just for convenience for organizing their subject. Well, I think that's a load of baloney … the laws really are out there.”
Origenes_{December 26, 2022
December
12
Dec
26
26
2022
01:21 PM
1
01
21
PM
PDT}

Relatd/38
Religion is OK if you keep it to yourself…?
No, religion is OK as long as you don't try to impose yours on others. Going back to Thomas Jefferson, in his 1787 Notes on the State of Virginia he wrote,
Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burned, tortured, fined and imprisoned. What has been the effect of this coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites; to support roguery and error all over the earth. ... Our sister states of Pennsylvania and New York, however, have long subsisted without any establishment at all. The experiment was new and doubtful when they made it. It has answered beyond conception. They flourish infinitely. Religion is well supported; of various kinds, indeed, but all good enough; all sufficient to preserve peace and order: or if a sect arises, whose tenets would subvert morals, good sense has fair play, and reasons and laughs it out of doors, without suffering the state to be troubled with it. They do not hang more malefactors than we do. They are not more disturbed with religious dissensions. On the contrary, their harmony is unparalleled, and can be ascribed to nothing but their unbounded tolerance, because there is no other circumstance in which they differ from every nation on earth. They have made the happy discovery, that the way to silence religious disputes, is to take no notice of them. Let us too give this experiment fair play, and get rid, while we may, of those tyrannical laws
Seversky_{December 26, 2022
December
12
Dec
26
26
2022
12:17 PM
12
12
17
PM
PDT}

CD at 39, Not when Flew was around.relatd_{December 26, 2022
December
12
Dec
26
26
2022
11:20 AM
11
11
20
AM
PDT}

Relatd I thought it was the King’s English…..chuckdarwin_{December 26, 2022
December
12
Dec
26
26
2022
11:07 AM
11
11
07
AM
PDT}

CD at 35, The old, somewhat acceptable standards: Deism and the rejection of organized religion. Religion is OK if you keep it to yourself...?relatd_{December 26, 2022
December
12
Dec
26
26
2022
09:49 AM
9
09
49
AM
PDT}

CD at 36, Ah, the old 'I read what you wrote but I'll just brush it aside' non-obvious defense. I study history. Either something actually happened or it didn't. Either someone actually said something or they didn't. As a working editor, manuscripts written in British English have words and turns of phrase that are obvious, and which would translate poorly or incorrectly to someone not raised in the Queen's English. So, guessing what someone might be thinking is rewriting history a bit.relatd_{December 26, 2022
December
12
Dec
26
26
2022
09:47 AM
9
09
47
AM
PDT}

Relatd At least I'm thinking. I think, therefore I thought......chuckdarwin_{December 26, 2022
December
12
Dec
26
26
2022
09:42 AM
9
09
42
AM
PDT}

I think a fourth point is important. Flew very explicitly defined his position up to his death as deism. He rejected Christianity and was particularly harsh towards Islam. He also eschewed organized religion.chuckdarwin_{December 26, 2022
December
12
Dec
26
26
2022
09:40 AM
9
09
40
AM
PDT}

Ooops. I shouldn't have posted anything. My bad. Please ignore my comments.Viola Lee_{December 26, 2022
December
12
Dec
26
26
2022
09:37 AM
9
09
37
AM
PDT}

CD at 32, You think, you think, you think this or that about Flew? Based on what?relatd_{December 26, 2022
December
12
Dec
26
26
2022
09:33 AM
9
09
33
AM
PDT}

Flew's statement is interesting:
When I finally came to recognize the existence of a God, it was not a paradigm shift, because my paradigm remains, as Plato in his Republic scripted his Socrates to insist: “We must follow the argument wherever it leads”... As it happens, this is the particular view of the world that I now find to be the soundest philosophical explanation….
First, and most telling, is that Flew insists he follows the argument wherever it leads. Not the evidence nor the data, but the argument. All of the evidence that Flew needed was available decades before 2004 when he went down his road to Damascus. Second, Flew's conversion from atheism to deism is a monumental "paradigm shift." I don't think Flew completely understands what Kuhn meant by a paradigm shift. It is the replacement of one model by another which better explains the accumulation of increasing evidence (data). It is not a change in methodology. Flew was in his 80s when he made these statements. I simply think he was out of touch with the sciences by that point in his career. Additionally, he candidly admitted that, because of his advanced age, the book was written mostly by Varghese. Third, he refers to his position as a "philosophical" explanation, not a scientific one. He was clearly looking for some type of intellectual closure. No one is trying to denigrate Flew or his long career as a philosopher. However, it is important to not re-create history. What we see is not exactly a death bed conversion, but it comes close....chuckdarwin_{December 26, 2022
December
12
Dec
26
26
2022
08:56 AM
8
08
56
AM
PDT}

Jerry, that was absolutely not the point I was making. And Origenes, that is not at all a "logical consequence", and not at all what I said.Viola Lee_{December 26, 2022
December
12
Dec
26
26
2022
08:17 AM
8
08
17
AM
PDT}

@ Ram “It’s fun to skip past Seversky, Sir Giles, and Chuckdarwin” I felt you were missing something so I corrected it, hope you don’t mind.AaronS1978_{December 26, 2022
December
12
Dec
26
26
2022
08:16 AM
8
08
16
AM
PDT}

“Nothing is the essence of my comments. That's why they are easy to scroll by." ChuckDarwin
jerry_{December 26, 2022
December
12
Dec
26
26
2022
08:15 AM
8
08
15
AM
PDT}

Viola Lee @26
It is a metaphysical assumption that “nature obeys laws”, which assumes the laws exist separately and impose their structure on nature.
It is not an assumption, the concept is forced upon us by logic. If the laws are produced bottom-up by "how nature acts", then the laws would change every minute. If physical processes produce laws, then different physical processes would produce different laws, but that is clearly not what we see.
Physical processes, however violent or complex, are thought to have absolutely no effect on the laws. There is thus a curious asymmetry: Physical processes depend on laws but the laws do not depend on physical processes. [From an article by Paul Davies.]
- - - -
A different metaphysical assumption is that nature exists as it is, and the laws are descriptions of how nature acts, but are not themselves causative nor have an independent ontological existence. This is a fundamental metaphysical difference that separates some of us here, and one that is not amenable to an objective determination of which is right. That’s the way metaphysical assumptions work.
It is determinable by logical argument.Origenes_{December 26, 2022
December
12
Dec
26
26
2022
08:11 AM
8
08
11
AM
PDT}

A different metaphysical assumption is that nature exists as it is, and the laws are descriptions of how nature acts, but are not themselves causative nor have an independent ontological existence.
This is bogus. It is an attempt at an answer to the fine tuning argument. But why should nature exist is this unbelievable precise way unless someone designed it that way. That is what has to be answered. To just say that's how it is, ignores the incredibly fine tuning.
We don’t disagree that the nature we observe behaves in orderly ways, but we disagree about the nature of our descriptions of nature.
No, we disagree on why nature behaves in this incredibly precise way. Our nature/universe is one of the 10 to the 10,000,000,000,000,000,000+ power of possible universes. (way to few zeros.) Why? jerry_{December 26, 2022
December
12
Dec
26
26
2022
08:07 AM
8
08
07
AM
PDT}

It is a metaphysical assumption that "nature obeys laws", which assumes the laws exist separately and impose their structure on nature. A different metaphysical assumption is that nature exists as it is, and the laws are descriptions of how nature acts, but are not themselves causative nor have an independent ontological existence. This is a fundamental metaphysical difference that separates some of us here, and one that is not amenable to an objective determination of which is right. That's the way metaphysical assumptions work. We don't disagree that the nature we observe behaves in orderly ways, but we disagree about the nature of our descriptions of nature.Viola Lee_{December 26, 2022
December
12
Dec
26
26
2022
06:28 AM
6
06
28
AM
PDT}

SG/17 "Brevity is the soul of wit....." (Polonius)chuckdarwin_{December 26, 2022
December
12
Dec
26
26
2022
06:16 AM
6
06
16
AM
PDT}

F/N: Let's highlight the core of Flew's remarks:
. . . this is the world picture, as I see it, that has emerged from modern science. Science spotlights three dimensions of nature that point to God. The first is the fact that nature obeys laws. The second is the dimension of life, of intelligently organized and purpose-driven beings, which arose from matter. The third is the very existence of nature. When I finally came to recognize the existence of a God, it was not a paradigm shift, because my paradigm remains, as Plato in his Republic scripted his Socrates to insist: “We must follow the argument wherever it leads.” The leaders of science over the last hundred years, along with some of today’s most influential scientists, have built a philosophically compelling vision of a rational universe that sprang from a divine Mind. As it happens, this is the particular view of the world that I now find to be the soundest philosophical explanation…
I comment: 1: Lawlike, intricately coordinated, complex functional order -- better, organisation -- is akin to and a generally recognised sign of mind. This is relevant to a cosmos that is massively fine tuned for C-Chem, aqueous medium, cell based life. 2: The world of life is chock full of such intricate, complex functional organisation, from the key molecules of life to the major body plans with organ systems, including our own. 3: This specifically includes what for months now objectors here have tried but failed to undermine or discredit, the presence of alphanumeric code in the cell, recognised by Crick in 1953 as he transitioned from "it is like a code" to "it is a code" a telling point that led to modern genetic code analysis. As I pointed out from a leading Biochem textbook, the consensus opinion, for cause, is:
"The information in DNA is encoded in its linear (one-dimensional) sequence of deoxyribonucleotide subunits . . . . A linear sequence of deoxyribonucleotides in DNA codes (through an intermediary, RNA) for the production of a protein with a corresponding linear sequence of amino acids . . . Although the final shape of the folded protein is dictated by its amino acid sequence, the folding of many proteins is aided by “molecular chaperones” . . . The precise three-dimensional structure, or native conformation, of the protein is crucial to its function." [Principles of Biochemistry, 8th Edn, 2021, pp 194 – 5. Now authored by Nelson, Cox et al, Lehninger having passed on in 1986. Attempts to rhetorically pretend on claimed superior knowledge of Biochemistry, that D/RNA does not contain coded information expressing algorithms using string data structures, collapse. We now have to address the implications of language, goal directed stepwise processes and underlying sophisticated polymer chemistry and molecular nanotech in the heart of cellular metabolism and replication.]
See https://uncommondescent.com/darwinist-debaterhetorical-tactics/protein-synthesis-what-frequent-objector-af-cannot-acknowledge/ 4: The existence of the world, a contingent, fine tuned domain of reality, calls for necessary being as reality root. As, immediately, an infinite regress of finite causal-temporal, thermodynamically constrained stages is an infeasible supertask, and circular retrocausation is something from the not yet, i.e. from non being. Thus, we need causally adequate, necessary being at the root of reality. 5: Necessary being, is framework to any possible world and is causally independent. (Try to imagine a distinct possible world, W in which two-ness does not exist, or begins, or can cease. Impossible, so soon as we have a distinct possibility, twoness is already present.) So, such is eternal. 6: A serious candidate NB -- flying spaghetti monsters and imagined island paradises need not apply -- will either be impossible of being [similar to a Euclidean plane square circle], or else will be possible and as framework to worlds, actual. Where, as God is patently serious, objectors to God need to provide good reason to hold him impossible of being, which they simply have not. 7: Further to this, God as inherently good, utterly wise creator and maximally great being, would also provide a root level reasonable bridge of is and ought: he expresses the good, and is the very root of wisdom so too the why of the good. Goodness is fulfillment or progress towards proper purpose, and evil the frustration or perversion of that, with of course, chaotic effects. 8: As part of that world, we sit on the same branch, our rational, responsible freedom with the first duties of such . . . which BTW would extend to ET's of like nature. These include:
1st – to truth [= accurate description of reality, thus an inherent good], 2nd – to right reason [= the first principles that help us clarify and warrant truth, instrumental goods], 3rd – to prudence [including warrant] [ = warrant results from right reason duly applied to circumstances, and is an aspect of prudence, the ability and determination to habitually govern and discipline oneself by the right use of reason with due cautions and regard to virtue etc], 4th – to sound conscience [= the very voice of this first law of our rational, responsible freedom], 5th – to neighbour [= those who are as we are, a fish we catch for dinner is not as a child we cherish and nurture]; so also, 6th – to fairness and 7th – to justice [ . . .] xth – etc. [= the royal etc, means to articulate systems of law, ethics, governance etc]
9: In this context, responsiveness to the voice of God is not ignorance, stupidity, insanity or wickedness, as too many are prone to invite, suggest, imply or outright assert. Such a hostile attitude speaks for itself, to its utter discredit. Mr Dawkins, I am looking straight at you. KF PS: Jerry, you raise a serious point.kairosfocus_{December 26, 2022
December
12
Dec
26
26
2022
04:40 AM
4
04
40
AM
PDT}

Those who don’t support ID are accurately described.
Remember, any personal attack over a disagreement on fact or policy is a confession that your point of view is correct and your critics are out of arguments. When you are wrong, people are delighted to tell you why, in detail. When you are right, you get the other treatment Scott Adams - today
jerry_{December 25, 2022
December
12
Dec
25
25
2022
05:47 PM
5
05
47
PM
PDT}

Science spotlights three dimensions of nature that point to God. The first is the fact that nature obeys laws.
According to Dennett, there are two types of explanations, scientific ones built from the ground (bottom) up and those that depend on something imaginary intentionally reaching down from some transcendent viewpoint to fix or establish something. He calls the bottom-up explanations “cranes,” and the top-down explanations “skyhooks.” Dennett fails to appreciate that the laws of nature are definitely skyhook-like and, in fact, offer only top-down explanations, that is, they are not cranes and do not offer bottom-up explanations. The question becomes: are there cranes?
There has long been a tacit assumption that the laws of physics were somehow imprinted on the universe at the outset, and have remained immutable thereafter. Physical processes, however violent or complex, are thought to have absolutely no effect on the laws. There is thus a curious asymmetry: Physical processes depend on laws but the laws do not depend on physical processes. Although this statement cannot be proved, it is widely accepted. [Paul Davies, Can the Laws of Physics be Explained?]
Mark my words, this is a game changer.Origenes_{December 25, 2022
December
12
Dec
25
25
2022
02:39 PM
2
02
39
PM
PDT}

KF at 20, The agenda is obvious. Evolution - regardless of facts to the contrary - must be promoted. Why? Evolution: Nothing made you. ID: An intelligence made you. The atheist worldview will not have a "scientific" basis without evolution. ID will lead people to the truth: They were designed.relatd_{December 25, 2022
December
12
Dec
25
25
2022
10:56 AM
10
10
56
AM
PDT}

SG, you just confessed to part of your problem, you are here to push an agenda not to seriously discuss a subject. That is the act of an ideologue, rather than one seriously pondering a matter, something that is sadly compounded by lack of substantial but too often dismissive or even cutting remarks on your part. I trust, a more substantial approach to matters of serious import for civilisation will be in your new year resolutions. That duly noted in response, enjoy the season. KFkairosfocus_{December 25, 2022
December
12
Dec
25
25
2022
10:35 AM
10
10
35
AM
PDT}

Yes, Dawkins wrote fairytales for adults but not Dawkins is to be blamed. He is just a salesman . Who bought his books?Sandy_{December 25, 2022
December
12
Dec
25
25
2022
09:24 AM
9
09
24
AM
PDT}

Flew also commented on the science fiction that Dawkins peddled in his book "The Selfish Gene",
Book - THERE IS A GOD: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind - Antony Flew Excerpt page 79-80: "I (Antony Flew) went on to remark that Richard Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene was a major exercise in popular mystification. As an atheist philosopher, I considered this work of popularization as destructive in its own ways as either The Naked Ape or The Human Zoo by Desmond Morris. In his works, Morris offers as the results of zoological illumination what amounts to a systematic denial of all that is most peculiar to our species contemplated as a biological phenomenon. He ignores or explains away the obvious differences between human beings and other species. Dawkins, on the other hand, labored to discount or depreciate the upshot of fifty or more years’ work in genetics — the discovery that the observable traits of organisms are for the most part conditioned by the interactions of many genes, while most genes have manifold effects on many such traits. For Dawkins, the main means for producing human behavior is to attribute to genes characteristics that can significantly be attributed only to persons. Then, after insisting that we are all the choiceless creatures of our genes, he infers that we cannot help but share the unlovely personal characteristics of those all-controlling monads. Genes, of course, can be neither selfish nor unselfish any more than they or any other nonconscious entities can engage in competition or make selections. (Natural selection is, notoriously, not selection; and it is a somewhat less familiar logical fact that, below the human level, the struggle for existence is not “competitive” in the true sense of the word.) But this did not stop Dawkins from proclaiming that his book “is not science fiction; it is science. We are survival machines — robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.” 2 Although he later issued occasional disavowals, Dawkins gave no warning in his book against taking him literally. He added, sensationally, that “the argument of this book is that we, and all other animals, are machines created by our genes.” If any of this were true, it would be no use to go on, as Dawkins does, to preach: “Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.” No eloquence can move programmed robots. But in fact none of it is true — or even faintly sensible. Genes, as we have seen, do not and cannot necessitate our conduct. Nor are they capable of the calculation and understanding required to plot a course of either ruthless selfishness or sacrificial compassion. https://archive.org/stream/There.Is.A.God/Antony%20Flew%20-%20There%20Is%20A%20God_djvu.txt
bornagain77_{December 25, 2022
December
12
Dec
25
25
2022
08:55 AM
8
08
55
AM
PDT}

Ram: It’s fun to skip past Seversky and Chuckdarwin.
And requires far less scrolling than skipping past BA77 and Kairosfocus. That is very considerate of Sev and CD.Sir Giles_{December 25, 2022
December
12
Dec
25
25
2022
08:44 AM
8
08
44
AM
PDT}

Aaron1978: It’s funny to see how, stereotypically, the atheists on this site come running in to attempt to diminish the significance of his conversion by attacking the notoriety of the individual. Bravo, for never letting me down.
Don’t you have to have notoriety to have it attacked?Sir Giles_{December 25, 2022
December
12
Dec
25
25
2022
08:42 AM
8
08
42
AM
PDT}

Prev 1 2 3 Next

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Leave a Reply