That was very interesting, Burns, thank you for presenting it.
Peace,
tammy
How would atheists respond to this?
by Knowsnothing 49 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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still thinking
Flew was a staunch atheist his entire life..but in his eighties he was starting to soften in his staunch beliefs...he certainly never even remotely claimied to be christian. Some people even put his mental abilities in question at the time the book was written and feel that Varghese took advantage of that.
The last book he wrote was heavily influenced by its co author...Roy Abraham Varghese, who, if you look at his history is a staunch believer in a type of god or entity..he has been involved in many multi denominational conventions.
in God and Philosophy (1966) and The Presumption of Atheism (1976, reprinted 1984), Flew argued that one should presuppose atheism until evidence of a God surfaces. Flew was also critical of the idea of life after death and the free will defence to the problem of evil
On several occasions, apparently starting in 2001, rumours circulated claiming that Flew had converted from atheism. Flew denied these rumours on the Secular Web website. [15]
In January 2003 Flew and Gary Habermas, his friend and philosophical adversary, conducted a dialogue on the resurrection at California Polytechnic State University - San Luis Obispo. During a couple of telephone discussions shortly after that dialogue, Flew explained to Habermas that he was considering becoming a theist. While Flew did not change his position at that time, he concluded that certain philosophical and scientific considerations were causing him to do some serious rethinking. He characterised his position as that of atheism standing in tension with several huge question marks
When asked in December 2004 by Duncan Crary of Humanist Network News if he still stood by the argument presented in The Presumption of Atheism, Flew replied he did but he also restated his position as deist: "I'm quite happy to believe in an inoffensive inactive god." When asked by Crary whether or not he has kept up with the most recent science and theology, he responded with "Certainly not," stating that there is simply too much to keep up with. Flew also denied that there was any truth to the rumours of 2001 and 2003 that he had converted to Christianity. [22]
It think that creationists/christians/believers have leapt on his acceptance that there may be something...and basically used him to prove a god is real.
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botchtowersociety
Cry me a river. Atheists love to use high-level Christian defections to bolster their cause.
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NewChapter
Well then, I suppose I am irritated. Why do they do that? Is it so hard to conceive that someone does not believe in a god, that they just can't help but make themselves believe that everyone comes around eventually? By they, I mean those that rewrite the intentions and lives of atheists. No wonder Dawkins made the comment about recording his death. When he is not around to defend himself, they will surely comb every comment he ever made to support the only narrative that they can accept.
NC
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NewChapter
I've never used any christian 'defector' to bolster any cause. I can't even think of any examples. I'm sure they are out there, but I must not be interested in them. I would only hope that if some are using people's experience as such, they at least do so honestly, and don't go trying to rewrite a person's life after they died and could not defend themselves. OR that the person made it VERY CLEAR while alive that they had given up belief in a god.
NC
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Qcmbr
Software reflects the mind that designed it. As we become better at computer problems we write better software. If DNA is evidence of god then apparently god , several hundreds of millions of years ago, was the equivalent of a 10 year old with a zx-spectrum programming pong from a magazine and before that he only had an abacus.
One feature of software and human design is the ability to start from scratch. No such evidence exists within DNA and all life shows significant common ancestry even when that ancestry causes problems or is manifest in poor design ( human back should really be re- engineered, human eye needs fixing etc.) software shows human traits such as play ( I always try and add a padMe() function in homage to star wars)), commenting ( to explain intent), experimentation (prototypes), bug fixes ( specific changes to fix specific manifest issues ), refactoring ( rewriting entire sections at once), irreducible complexity ( program's can rarely be reduced to independently functioning subsystems , for a program to work it needs a perfect copy of each required library or it won't compile .) I could go on but it's clear to me that DNA was never designed in the way software is.
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bohm
*sigh*
- we have directly obvserved how evolution generate new information/complexity in living organisms, ie. evolution. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nylon-eating_bacteria, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment)
So what is the claim exacly? That evolution can only generate a /little/ information, and then reach some boundary from where it cannot progress? why? what is the boundary? is there any evidence at all for such a claim?
The article, like all sloppy pseudo-science, only rely on quoting people and does not put forth actual claims or evicence for those claims like an scientist would be expected to do. "Here is a guy, here is what he said. Here is another guy, here is what he said. Dont bother asking why they believe it, they are scientists, so you should just believe as them!". Incidently, the Awake and the Watchtower treat science in exactly the same manner.
Returning to Dr. Flew, there is good evidence he went senile in his later years and his last book was not written by him: http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2007/11/antony-flew-bogus-book.html, http://www.infidels.org/kiosk/article369.html
Nevertheless suppose he converted in a sound state of mind, to me the most important question is the actual evidence for/against any given God, what evidence did Dr. Flew discover?
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slimboyfat
Didn't Anthony Flew have dementia when he turned into a believer? Someone else wrote the book for him because he could no longer write or say anything coherent.
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Phizzy
My thoughts on Life the Universe and Everything, to steal a Douglass Adams phrase, are shaped by the facts I come across, the explanation of what those facts mean by people far more knowledgeable and intelligent than me, and by experience.
Experience has taught me that just because someone I respect, perhaps love, believes something, that does not make it true.
I don't give a tom tit which celebrity or intellectual or whatever joins the God camp or the Atheist camp, (not that there is a single "camp" of either) I do not find it persuasive.
If Richard Dawkins were to suddenly have an epiphany (read brain-fart) and become a believer in some way, that would not even make me stop and re-examine my position.
Why not ? becuase by becoming a person of faith (belief without evidence) he has become one of the deluded. If you believe something to be true without proof you are deluded, I do not follow any man or woman, but if I were inclined to do so, I would not choose to follow the deluded, it is the same path as the JW's tread.
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THE GLADIATOR
After many years on this board, watching and participating in discussion, one thing has become apparent. No-one has come to a definite conclusion as to what a Christian actually is. There are so many shades of colour and belief systems covered by the word Christian, that just believing in love and disregarding most of the bible is enough to qualify. Many Christians now accept evolution to the shock of many fundamental American Christians. By this standard I ask - what actually is an atheist?
There are those that are adamant there is no God and never could be. Others say they simply don’t have enough evidence to believe in God but are open minded about the possibility. In other words they don’t know and are still seeking truth. Then there are those who are still asking what God actually means. Even believers have no unified agreement on God's nature or abilities Unlike the Greeks and Romans with 300 gods, most western believers are only one God away from being atheists. It seems that no-one actually knows for sure.
Recent scientific discoveries concerning the nature of matter, energy and anti-matter make us realise that we have so much still to learn. Science like Christianity is always adjusting it outlook and evolving. Perhaps the ancient eastern wisdom that predates Christ, had it all summed up when it stated that God is in all of us, all of nature and is the universe. Perhaps God cannot be understood or explained with words. Perhaps one day we will realize that so called atheists and Christians are singing from the same hymn sheet but some were more in tune than others!