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.
Evidently you missed my point entirely. He showed his cards when he said "The theory of evolution is irrelevant to the subject of God." Those are HIS words, not mine. I merely quoted him. That is the entire basis and reason for the theory of evolution. It seeks the origins of a universe in which THE EXISTENCE OF GOD IS IRRELEVANT. If you can't see or understand that, I will pray for your eyes to be opened.Again, here is what was said:
Narby:"The theory of evolution is irrelevant to the subject of God."He did not in any way, shape, or form say that God is irrelevant - period. He said that the theory of evolution is not relevant to the subject of God. To accuse him of "showing his cards", you must turn his words around - shoving words in his mouth that he did not say or mean.
(and he goes in to say God could have created evolution)
GLDNGUN: "And that's the problem. God is NOT irrelevant."
" And now to quote you..."It's so very common, I'm not picking on you. It would just be refreshing to have a thread where people argued only the points that are actually made."You know... I said that as a kind and friendly gesture... Yet you - a "Christian" - throw in my face as as a cut, full of sarcasm. That says a lot.
Touche!
Very good.
"When I said "data" I was referring to what is observeable in the world - life forms, fossils, DNA, etc. All the same things evolutionary proponents use to state their case. I draw different conclusions from the same observable data.
BTW - Would you please stop tying me to ID proponents. Most of those folks would not accept a creationist. Creationists and ID folks are two separate groups."
If you draw different conclusions that the Theory of Evolution from scientific data, you are plainly wrong.
ID and creationists are the same. They use the Bible against science. They both use ridiculous interpretations to pretend that biology cares about creation-it doesn't.
Until you can come up with a coherent systematic explanation (theory) for the data we have, you don't have a legitimate argument. Good luck on that, because science has not been able to falsify the Theory in over 150 years. But I am sure your "observations" and "conclusions" are far more valid than the all the scientists who have worked to validate the theory and show that evolution is a fact.
"but due to the Cambrian explosion, and lack of transitional species"
The notion that development of phyla was sudden in the Cambrian is ludicrous. It lasted millions of years. There is enough evidence from the precambrian to see evolution taking place.
There is no lack of transitional species. Creationists discount any found species as a transitional, because once its found it is no longer "missing". lol
"It seeks the origins of a universe in which THE EXISTENCE OF GOD IS IRRELEVANT. "
False! Biology doesn't care about the origins of the universe or the origins of life. The biological theory of evolution contains neither of these concepts.
As usual, the creationist strawman rears its ugly head.
I am a scientist and a Christian. There is no contradiction between the Bible and science, if you don't hold the Bible to a superficial and silly meaning.
No. There is no science in creationism.
Also, macro and micro evolution are the same process of allele frequency changes in populations over time.
To insist that one can occur and the other can't is nonsense.
Just do a search. Its the same article.
There is no science in scientific creationism which is the same thing as ID under another name, with a phoney institute to give it "credibility".
There is no reason to be hostile to science, unless someone is making millions from the scam. Are you on the Discovery Inst. staff, work for ICR or AIG?
I hate to break it to you guys, but he's simply switched teams in the leauge of skeptics and freethinkers. He hasn't jumped over to the other conference. He's deist.
That's like changing from a socialist to a progressive, not changing from a socialist to a small l libertarian.
Ah, my friend, the log cabin was created when logs fell in a certain configuration just like the faces on Mt. Rushmoore were formed by the effects of wind and rain on the rock.
Or my watch. I was just walking along one day and all these minerals collated and formed this machine. It was simply amazing. Keeps good time, too.
Isn't nature amazing? Making an eyeball out of mud, faces on a mountain and a log cabin?
Mark for later reading.
And here's the proof:...
Isaiah 40:26 "Look up into the heavens. Who created all the stars? He brings them out one after another, calling each by its name. And he counts them to see that none are lost or have strayed away."
Sounds like a VERY HANDS-ON God!
Really? What "different conclusions" do you draw from the patterns of shared endogenous retroviruses in cross-species DNA comparisons? The common ancestry of evolutionary biology seems the only rational explanation. Ditto for the "fossilized" centromere in human chromosome 2, etc. etc. etc.
Well, let's just take this silly analogy to its illogical conclusion. In the evolutionary model, your cloud will continue to evolve into...what?
Into nothing, since the cloud/snow example was not brought in as an example of an "evolutionary model". It was brought in as a counterexample to your (false) claim that there's some sort of "natural law" which requires all things to "go from order to disorder". Not only is there no such law, but ordinary natural processes manage to "go from disorder to order" all the time, contrary to your misunderstandings about nature, laws, and science. He gave you one example in order to point out how trivially wrong you were.
Here in the real world the storm weakens into nothing.
Irrelevant to the point being made. You're still wrong when you presume that "natural laws" force everything to "go from order to disorder". They don't. Under the right conditions, nature easily makes things go from disorder to order.
Tell you what. Go stack some wooden matchsticks into an intelligent, complex design. A building for example. Then take a swing at it with a baseball bat and see if the matchsticks fall into a more complex organization.
Rigorously define "more complex organization". Be precise and show your work. We'll wait. (Hint: The concepts you're flinging around aren't nearly as simplistic as you presume them to be.)
If it doesn't happen the first time, I'm sure it's just a matter of time and chance. Keep at it, and let us know when your matchsticks form the Eiffel Tower, Empire State Building, or a retractable-roof stadium by "chance".
Congratulations, that's one of the worst analogies for evolution I've ever seen. Evolutionary processes require three things in order to work: 1) reproduction, 2) variation, 3) selection.
Your "example" fails to incorporate two of the three necessary processes. Thus, its results won't in any way be a valid analogue to the results that an evolutionary process would achieve. Nice try.
And contrary to all the claims by all the anti-evolutionists, evolutionary processes *ACTUALLY DO WORK* when applied in practical applications, such as problem-solving genetic algorithms, or molecular evolution harnessed to derive novel pharmaceuticals, and much more. Evolution *does* produce "order out of chaos" when it occurs. Deal with it.
And please try to learn something about a field of science before you attempt to critique it.
Nature is indeed amazing, but your flawed analogies aren't.
Before you might have a chance at effectively critiqueing evolutionary biology, you'd have to know a decent amount about it, which you clearly do not.
Huh??
But for people who believe that there are influences other than naturalistic ones in the formation of life on the planet, abiogenesis and speciation are counter intuitive and for me - not believable.
Then I submit that you don't know much about the vast amount of evidence indicating that they did nonetheless happen, and the understanding of the processes by which they have.
I do admit, however, that if I had the view that only naturalistic processes have occurred since the earth was molten magma (which evolutionary scientists believe), then believing in abiogenesis and evolution becomes more compelling.
I take it you're not aware of the fact that the majority of Americans who believe evolution are *Christians*?
I think the influence of evolution is waning.
..mostly because of the efforts of rabid anti-evolutionists (mostly creationists) who keep lying about it to the public -- like the ones who obviously told you the following lies:
I used to believe it for the most part, but due to the Cambrian explosion, and lack of transitional species,
First, the "Cambrian explosion" took place over about a hundred million years.
Second, there are *thousands* of transitional fossils which have already been found, and more are being found practically every day. I know that creationists are fond of repeatedly claiming that there are "no transitional fossils", but quite bluntly, they're lying like two-dollar whores.
I tend to believe all life was created about the same time.
You're welcome to believe anything you like, no matter how much it is contradicted by the evidence and real-world reality checks.
And since science is better at creating theories based on empirical and testable information, it is better suited to current issues than guessing what happenened a long time ago with limited fossil evidence.
Ah, yet another creationist misrepresentation. There is, in fact, a *vast* amount of "empirical and testable information" about the history of life on Earth, and the fossil evidence is hardly "limited". Nor is the nearly *unimaginable* amount of "empirical and testable information" contained within the combined DNA of all the life forms on Earth accurately described as "limited" -- there is more information on evolutionary history "archived" in the genomes of living organisms than there is information in all the books in all the libraries on the planet. "Limited", you say?
I regret to inform you that the creationists have lied to you again.
Well, then you're pretty dense.
My point was that the people who have been promoting the ID and creation "science" issues are in the same vein as Jim Jones. I.E. frauds.
They perhaps haven't killed anyone, but they certianly do not deserve the respect to believe anything they say.
Well, then He has managed to confound you. Evolution is simple to understand, and God created it.
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