Posted on 07/20/2008 3:48:33 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
(for additional background on Antony Flew)
Biola University page on Antony Flew
http://www.biola.edu/antonyflew/
(...and in Flew’s own words)
“My Pilgrimmage From Atheism To Theism”
http://www.biola.edu/antonyflew/flew-interview.pdf
Interesting passages include:
Flew’s viewpoint on Islam, The Bible v. The Koran, and
the intellectual caliber of Saint Paul.
(p.12 of the .pdf)
Flew’s mention that his father (an important person in
The Methodist Church) might have tried to get his denomination
out of The World Council of Churches due to the WCC being
hijacked by Marxists
(bottom of page 14 of .pdf)
ping for later
Every knee shall bow.
Good news..Wonderful to see that man and God has been reconciled again- in this instance, Prof. Flew whose philosophical studies are a delight to read...Much as the mind of Aquinas accepted God from the start, Prof. Flew came to God in a more roundabout way, but he found Home.
good read - honest thinking
Isn’t Deism a heresy in all Christian denominations? Don’t you have to accept Christ as lord and savior?
BIOLA is a very good evangelical Christian college. I know a couple of teachers there. They actually believe the Bible at that college.
Well, I could answer that, but as a Catholic and as a Christian, I would get sucked into a twilight zone that I would rather avoid.
Full of delusional absolutists.
Aren’t Hindu’s theists too?
The arguments of atheism i have seen against Christianity much rely upon choosing a invalid form of it so that they may attack it. My thought here: http://peacebyjesus.witnesstoday.org/Atheism1.html
Dawkins’ response to flew in his own words.
http://exchristian.net/exchristian/2007/11/richard-dawkins-and-lee-strobel-antony.html
Summary: Flew is senile, he fell for the Discovery institutes nonsense, and he tells provable lies to advance his new cause.
But what if it's true?
This is from Flew in 2001:
"Richard C. Carrier, current Editor in Chief of the Secular Web, tells me that "the internet has now become awash with rumors" that I "have converted to Christianity, or am at least no longer an atheist." Perhaps because I was born too soon to be involved in the internet world I had heard nothing of this rumour. So Mr. Carrier asks me to explain myself in cyberspace. This, with the help of the Internet Infidels, I now attempt.
Those rumours speak false. I remain still what I have been now for over fifty years, a negative atheist. By this I mean that I construe the initial letter in the word 'atheist' in the way in which everyone construes the same initial letter in such words as 'atypical' and 'amoral'. For I still believe that it is impossible either to verify or to falsify - to show to be false - what David Hume in his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion happily described as "the religious hypothesis." The more I contemplate the eschatological teachings of Christianity and Islam the more I wish I could demonstrate their falsity.
I first argued the impossibility in 'Theology and Falsification', a short paper originally published in 1950 and since reprinted over forty times in different places, including translations into German, Italian, Spanish, Danish, Welsh, Finnish and Slovak. The most recent reprint was as part of 'A Golden Jubilee Celebration' in the October/November 2001 issue of the semi-popular British journal Philosophy Now, which the editors of that periodical have graciously allowed the Internet Infidels to publish online: see "Theology & Falsification"."
The moment . . . the very MOMENT . . . that a debater goes ad hominem reveals that (1) he feels terribly threatened and (2) he does not feel comfortable merely arguing the factual/logical case.
All a positional proponent needs do is argue his own case. The use of ad hominem attacks against foes is a giveway about the weakness that the proponent feels about his own case.
Doesn’t matter if we’re talking pro or anti theism, pro or anti evolution, pro or anti ANYTHING. Any topic, anywhere, any time.
It also makes profound statements about someone’s character, too. And those statements are not positive.
Strictly speaking, heresy is the denial of one or more tenets of a faith one professes to accept; thus, Christians who disagree on major issues hurl charges of heresy in both (or many or all) directions. But Deists don't claim to be Christian, so they can't be Christian heretics.
Belloc (and Chesterton following him, I think) did call Islam "merely the greatest of the Christian heresies" but that's sort of loose usage: I guess historically there's some evidence that Mohammed got the basics of Islam from renegade Christians, but he himself -- and still less his followers -- never professed Christianity.
He only thinks that because he's 85 years old -- it's definitely an old-fashioned view! ;-)
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