Posted on 01/10/2005 2:47:28 PM PST by Mr. Silverback
Antony Flew, the 81-year-old British philosophy professor who taught at Oxford and other leading universities, became an atheist at age 15. Throughout his long career he argued—including in debates with an atheist-turned-Christian named C. S. Lewis—that there was a “presumption of atheism,” that is, the existence of a creator could not be proved.
But he’s now been forced to face the evidence. It comes from the Intelligent Design movement, led by Dr. Phillip Johnson and particularly the work of Michael Behe, the Lehigh biochemist who has proven the “irreducible complexity” of the human cell structure. Though eighty-one years old, Flew has not let his thinking fossilize, but has faithfully followed his own dictum to “go where the evidence leads.”
Christian philosophy professor Gary Habermas of Liberty University conducted an interview with Flew that will be published in the winter issue of Philosophia Christi, the journal of the Evangelical Philosophical Society and Biola University. Flew told Habermas that a pivotal point in his thinking was when he realized two major flaws in the various theories of how nature might have created itself. First, he recognized that evolutionary theory has no reasonable explanation for “the first emergence of living from non-living matter”—that is, the origin of life. Second, even if a living cell or primitive animal had somehow assembled itself from non-living chemicals, he reasoned it would have no ability to reproduce.
Flew told Habermas, “This is the creature, the evolution of which a truly comprehensive theory of evolution must give some account. Darwin himself was well aware that he had not produced such an account. It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design.”
Flew has, thus, become a Deist—that is, he acknowledges God as creator but not as a personal deity. In his opinion, “There is no room either for any supernatural revelation of that God or any transactions between that God and individual human beings.” In fact, he told a group last May that he considers both the Christian God and the Islamic God to be “omnipotent Oriental despots—cosmic Saddam Husseins.”
But a crack is beginning to develop in his opinion that God hasn’t spoken through Scripture. When he reads the first chapter of Genesis, Flew says he’s impressed that a book written thousands of years ago harmonizes with twenty-first-century science. “That this biblical account might be scientifically accurate,” says Flew, “raises the possibility that it is revelation.” A book containing factual statements that no human knew about at the time of writing seems to argue that the authors must have had coaching from the Creator.
The evidence is there for all who will look, as his one-time adversary C. S. Lewis discovered, and as more and more thinking intellectuals are discovering today. So it is that Antony Flew, perhaps the most famous philosopher of atheism, is just a step or two away from the kingdom.
Also,,, in the book of PSALMS,,, chapter 53 " The ( FOOL ) hath said in his heart, there is no GOD "
I only have one word to say to that...
BINGO!
The basic rhetorical strategy for evolution these days is to wait until a person questioning the theory comes up with a good point, and then say, "Well, evolution doesn't address that." A nice parry, but the bottom line is that macro evolution either has to explain (or at least have some bloody opinion on) how life got here or it has to admit that intelligent design is as good an explanation as any.
Dylsexics Book of PSLAMPS...chapter 35 "The fool hath said in his threat, there is no DOG"
Bookmarked.
I've never come across anybody who believed that, though there are plenty who see how silly the idea of theistic evolution is, at least when it's combined with Christianity. Death came into the world along with sin, but if evolution is true, we climbed up a mountian of death before we ever grew brains.
They apparently think God put all that evidence out there just to fool us.
Oh, evidence like irreducible complexity?
Like the death of Mark Twain, the stories about how Evolution is being reject by scientists have been greatly exagerated.
Some people are slow to give up their religion.
Why is this rocket science to grasp?? Didn't we "know" this to be true when we were children....before we got doused with major brainwashing by evolutionist teaching? A perfectly intelligent man finally gets it after 81 years.
Sing out as soon as you can produce a benficial mutation.
I'm just amazed to think that there are people who think that God could not have been smart enough to set up the system of evolution in the first place.
I'm amazed you are (no offense, but there's no other way to put it) dumb enough to think that Creationists reject evolution because we think God is dumb, or in some way incompetent. It's not that He couldn't, it's that He didn't, and the signs were clear long before Behe and company came along.
Wrong answer.
It is between those who believe Christian doctrine, and those who are willing to rewrite it.
Kinda comforting to know you'll never see the headline:
"WEIGHING THE EVIDENCE: A CHRISTIAN ABANDONS CHRISTIANITY"
"No one can snatch them out of my Father's hand..."
Funny, that's my conclusion about evolutionists.
Got a link for the previous thread...or are you just whistling Dixie??
Are you implying that there has never been an instance of a Christian losing his or her faith?
Surely, you jest.
Wow. A literalist among the Evos...
Did you hear the one about the dyslexic agnostic insomniac? he'd sit up all night, wondering if there's a Dog.
I do not understand the relevance of your response to my quesiton.
Actually, even my pastor has related his "loosing his faith" story with us, so I shouldn't imply that a Christian cannot loose his/her faith. I stand..er..sit here corrected. In saying that, I would say my hypothetical headline actually COULD exist. It's just that even the Christian that obviously can abandon his faith will not be abadoned by God. That is, he/she cannot undo his/her being born again.
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