Anthony Flew

[tgm21234]

patrickmadrid.blogspot.com/2010/04/antony-flew-former-atheist-who.html

It’s good to read conversion stories such as this one.

 

[Call_Me_V]

patrickmadrid.blogspot.com/2010/04/antony-flew-former-atheist-who.html

It’s good to read conversion stories such as this one.

Keep in mind that he converted from atheism to deism and continued to insist that things like an afterlife or religion in general were total BS. I’m not so sure your God will look any more kindly upon him than He would have if he’d been an atheist.

V

 

[lao_tzu]

patrickmadrid.blogspot.com/2010/04/antony-flew-former-atheist-who.html

It’s good to read conversion stories such as this one.

Hello tgm,

Unfortunately, I’m afraid I can’t say the same. There’s a subtext to the blog entry you’ve posted that serves no one well, I think. There is the implication that Professor Flew became a Christian, though the blogger does manage to avoid saying so directly. It’s not true. He never became a Christian and, whatever the change in his beliefs, they never included a personal god, or an interventionist god, or even a god that was aware of its own existence, let alone a god that communicates with humans through any form of revelation. Whatever it was he believed in, it wasn’t your god.

Philosophers tend to choose their words with a nicety that is foreign to casual conversation. Where a typical adherent may see a philosopher’s use of “God” as a reference to their own deity, implying some form of theological agreement, it’s generally necessary to be very clear what definition of “God” is being applied.

In an interview, View attachment 7729, with Gary Habermas, there was this exchange:

HABERMAS: Once you mentioned to me that your view might be called Deism. Do you think that would be a fair designation?

FLEW: Yes, absolutely right. What Deists, such as the Mr. Jefferson who drafted the American Declaration of Independence, believed was that, while reason, mainly in the form of arguments to design, assures us that there is a God, there is no room either for any supernatural revelation of that God or for any transactions between that God and individual human beings.

This same blogger is even less circumspect about Einstein, creating confusion with one of the typically misleading soundbites surrounding Einstein’s use of “God” as well. In speaking of the origins of the universe or the most intricate details of its structure, physicists do tend to use religious language. Contemplation of any entity billions of light-years in extent is awe-inspiring for all of us, theist and atheist alike. The vocabulary of awe promulgated by theologians is a tempting target when describing the universe, and atheists from Einstein to Feynman have been known to take advantage of it. This does not, however, imply agreement with any important doctrine of the Christian faith. The physicist’s god is simply too abstract for that.

The year before he died, in 1954, Einstein responded to personal correspondence from a “self-made” man who doubted press portrayals of Einstein as a believer in the Judeo-Christian concept of God. This impression, then, as now, had been spread by those who failed to look closely enough at the context of Einstein’s remarks. In response, Einstein agreed with the writer that he had been misrepresented, writing:

“It was, of course, a lie what you read about my religious convictions, a lie which is being systematically repeated. I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”

To be quite honest, I don’t believe in any existence after death. Neither do I believe we can ever really know the thinking of those around us. We humans are at best only middlin’ honest, even with ourselves. But I do believe it’s important to remain faithful to our fellows who have died by presenting them as they actually were rather than as what hope would have them be.

As ever, Jesse

 

[amhara]

In Antony Flew’s 2004 “coming out” debut, he admitted that the evidence for design (specifically in DNA) was responsible for his change of mind regarding the existence of a divine Designer:

“Yes, I now think it does… almost entirely because of the DNA investigations. What I think the DNA material has done is that it has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinary diverse elements to work together.”

In the book, he indicates that he is still open to Christianity.

This is a man, who promoted atheism for decades, and now look, science has indeed lead him to some concept of God.

 

[Call_Me_V]

In Antony Flew’s 2004 “coming out” debut, he admitted that the evidence for design (specifically in DNA) was responsible for his change of mind regarding the existence of a divine Designer:

“Yes, I now think it does… almost entirely because of the DNA investigations. What I think the DNA material has done is that it has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinary diverse elements to work together.”

In the book, he indicates that he is still open to Christianity.

This is a man, who promoted atheism for decades, and now look, science had indeed lead him to some concept of God.

Flew later retracted his support for the DNA Intelligent Design hypothesis (which was his original reason for converting).
His first statement, (which was pro the DNA argument) was,
Antony Flew:

My one and only piece of relevant evidence [for an Aristotelian God] is the apparent impossibility of providing a naturalistic theory of the origin from DNA of the first reproducing species … [In fact] the only reason which I have for beginning to think of believing in a First Cause god is the impossibility of providing a naturalistic account of the origin of the first reproducing organisms.

He later retracted this statement, saying,
Antony Flew:

I now realize that I have made a fool of myself by believing that there were no presentable theories of the development of inanimate matter up to the first living creature capable of reproduction.

He blames his error on being “misled” by Richard Dawkins because Dawkins

“has never been reported as referring to any promising work on the production of a theory of the development of living matter,”

.

Flew also makes another admission:

“I have been mistaught by Gerald Schroeder.”… “it was precisely because he appeared to be so well qualified as a physicist (which I am not) that I was never inclined to question what he said about physics.”

He admits that he never bothered to read up on Schroeder’s critics, and thus, did not, at first, realize he was being misled.

So Flew’s original reason for converting, the reason that he claimed was his “one and only piece of relevant evidence”, has been retracted by him. Don’t get me wrong, he still remained a deist until his death, but he gave up on the main and only reason for his conversion, and from what I’ve read changed to a generic reference to the complexity of the Universe to explain his belief in God.

V