The Thrill of Discovery!!!
Posted on 12/11/2004 6:24:20 AM PST by AmericanMade1776
New York (AsiaNews/CWN) – Anthony Flew, the British scholar who has been one of the world's most proponent of atheism, has conceded that scientific evidence points to the existence of God.
A prolific writer and energetic lecturer who has advanced atheist arguments throughout his long academic career, Flew made his dramatic concession at a conference in New York in which he recanted the ideology of a lifetime conceding that there is scientific evidence for the existence of God.
Flew said that the latest biological research “has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved.”
Early this year, writing in Philosophy Now magazine, Flew had indicated that his commitment to atheism was wavering. He wrote: “It has become inordinately difficult even to begin to think about constructing a naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first reproducing organism.”
Flew credited a Texas Catholic, Roy Varghese, with helping to persuade him that biological research points to the workings of an intelligent creator. Varghese, the author of The Wonder of the World, organized the May conference at which Flew first questioned his own atheistic position.
Flew—whose 1984 essay, The Presumption of Atheism, fixed his place as the leading proponent of that view—emphasises that he has not accepted Christianity. He said: “I'm thinking of a God very different from the God of the Christian, and far and away from the God of Islam.” He likened his current position to the deism of Thomas Jefferson, explaining that he is now sympathetic to the researchers who theorise about an ‘intelligent design’ in the working of creation.
(Excerpt) Read more at asianews.it ...
What's the current over/under on total number of threads on this guy's "conversion"?
Also posted here Preech http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1299039/posts.
To: Anthont Flew
From: God
Message: Well duh?
bump
ARAFAT IS DEAD!!!
If God had a creator then we would have to ignore God and worship his creator!
Three that I know of so far...I wouldn't call it a conversion yet, but a step in the right direction...remember, the devils also believe in God and tremble...at least this atheist has the faith of a devil now. Seriously, though, for this guy to say the very fact of the universe implies a Creator is something, though I don't think he needs to compare God to Saddam Hussein.
Can you be sure? Someone reported seeing Arafat with Elvis in Brazil.
Unless he accepts Jesus as the Son of God he is still pretty much toast.
God didn't say "well duh" to me when I finally got it...he said "Welcome home"
I am not saying that Flew is a convert. He said himself that he's not jumping on the Christian bandwagon.
But before you can believe that God sent His Son to die for us...you must believe that God is real.
By your Freeper name, I infer you are a Preacher?
Good point, MelBell! Jesus was after all the Son of God.
Preecher, actually...A preacher without a degree. (grin)
I see...My Brother is one of those too.
The Thrill of Discovery!!!
I'm putting my money on at least ten threads.
This 'conversion' appears to be a lot of wishful thinking on someone's part. I did some searching online and found a piece by him at:
http://www.thewonderoftheworld.com/Sections1-article227-page1.html
Which states:
First, a substantial case of agreement. Richard Dawkins has famously asserted that “Natural selection … the blind automatic process which Darwin has discovered … we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life.” Against that claim I pointed out, after quoting a significant sentence from the fourteenth and final chapter of The Origin of Species, that one place where, until a satisfactory naturalistic explanation has been developed, there would appear to be room for an Argument to Design is at the first emergence of living from non-living matter. And, unless that first living matter already possessed the capacity to reproduce itself genetically, there will still be room for a second argument to Design until a satisfactory explanation is found for its acquisition of that capacity. You have in your book deployed abundant evidence indicating that it is likely to be a very long time before such naturalistic explanations are developed, if indeed there ever could be.
Our disagreements begin with any shift from the God of natural theology to the God of a Revelation. For the writings of Aristotle, which ultimately supplied Aquinas with most of his arguments for the existence of his God, contain no definition of the word ‘God’ and no concept of an omniscient and omnipotent personal Being unceasingly observing human thought and human conduct, much less a concept of a Being demanding our obedience and threatening us with an eternity of extreme torture for what He insists on perceiving as our unnecessitated and unforgiven disobedience. So the five Aristotelian arguments which Aquinas famously offered as proofs of the existence of the Christian God as surely today more appropriately to be seen as arguments for the existence of a Spinozistic or Deistic ‘God of Nature’ who or which leaves Nature and its creatures (including its human creatures) entirely to their own devices. The nearest which Aristotle ever came to the God or Gods of Christianity or Islam was when in the Nicomachean Ethics (X, viii, 8) he argued that ‘if as is generally believed, [not God but] the gods exercise some superintendence over human affairs, it is reasonable to suppose that they take pleasure in that part of man which is best and most akin to themselves, namely the intellect, and that they recompense with their favours those who esteem and honour this most because these care for the things dear to themselves and act rightly and nobly. Now it is clear that all these attributes belong most of all to the wise man. He therefore is most beloved by the gods, and, if so, he is naturally most happy.”
He does not appear to be embracing religion at all, on the contrary, he is simply pointing out the obvious, that we don't know everything about the world and until we do, we should not make up things to support our case.
It in no way converted him. Read his review of it:
http://www.thewonderoftheworld.com/Sections1-article227-page1.html
REVELATION 4:1-3
"AFTER THIS I LOOKED, AND, BEHOLD, A DOOR WAS OPENED IN HEAVEN: AND THE FIRST VOICE WHICH I HEARD WAS AS IT WERE OF A TRUMPET TALKING WITH ME: WHICH SAID, COME UP HITHER, AND I WILL SHOW THEE THINGS WHICH MUST BE HEREAFTER. AND IMMEDIATELY I WAS IN THE SPIRIT: AND BEHOLD, A THRONE WAS SET IN HEAVEN, AND ONE SAT ON THE THRONE. AND HE THAT SAT WAS TO LOOK UPON LIKE A JASPER AND SARDINE STONE: AND THERE WAS A RAINBOW ROUND ABOUT THE THRONE, IN SIGHT LIKE UNTO AN EMERALD".....
I understand that he is not embracing any Religion, but only the existence of God. Really only the possiblity that God Exist.
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