Geoff Arnold

Why must anything not currently understood be attributed to a God or Gods?
People used to consider thunder as the Gods anger and now most people understand thunder as an explainable without God.
Maybe we will not live to find all the answers but that doesn't mean they aren't out there or that a supernatural being created them.

It seems that the reporting of Anthony Flew's apparent rational acknowledgement of the existence of a designer has atheists in panic mode. i suspect that the standard-bearer of atheism's change of mind will cause the atheistic world to find it necessary to impune his intelligence. The once brilliant will be called an moron. Or we will see the age-card thrown down. perhaps senillity is the answer.

The bottom-line is that Flew, in his dotage, has concluded that the 'God of the Gaps' is a suddenly credible construct. Needless to say, few others will share that rather sad view. The only interesting aspect of the affair, is the desperate attempt of god's chosen, to make so much more of it than there is. Old bloke hedges his bets, big deal...

I don't see any kind of panic. I do see a fair degree of curiosity about how someone goes about revising a fairly complex set of philosophical positions. "Dotage" (and "senility") both seem unnecessarily pejorative. And if Flew has indeed said that he now views this as a scientific rather than a philosophical question, and that we should therefore not treat him as an expert on this matter, why not take him at his word?

Mr Arnold, thank you for the patient response. I am not a philosopher or scientist and don't fully understand your last reply. I think that the debate about God's existence is not scientific in a pure sense. I think that logic dictates the existence of God and that science will support it. It is significant if Dr. Flew has concluded the necessity of something greater than ourselves and chance (chance doesn't exist as a force for cause). Maybe the complexity of the philosophical positions is getting in the way of clarity. i find this debate to about the existence of God to quickly drift to emotional and selfish motives rather than a true search for truth. Thank you for the service you have provided. Merry Christmas to you and your family.

Charlie: let me see if I can be a little clearer.

Different people approach the question of the [non]existence of god from different perspectives. It's usually the case that we start out with a preconceived idea (from family, community, etc.) and then choose the approach that leads to the conclusion that we want! However, one approach that is common in philosophy is based upon the notion that knowledge is "justified true belief". Under what conditions is a belief in god "justified"? (Check out the Wikipedia entry on epistemology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology for more on this.)

The main arguments for the existence of god are presented in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arguments_for_the_existence_of_God . In the past, Antony Flew was unpersuaded by all of them (and from his recent interviews it seems that he still rejects all but one of them). However he has now indicated that he is persuaded by some aspects of the Teleological Argument that there is some kind of "Designer" god. His position seems to be "deist": he does not believe in an anthropomorphic, personal god involved with the world and people. (It's not clear why the same word "god" should be stretched to cover such widely differing and incompatible ideas, but never mind.)

The problem that Flew faces is that the Teleological/design argument is essentially an "argument from incredulity" - that one cannot imagine how the world could have arisen without a designer, and so there must have been one. It relies on the conviction that while science is continually explaining more and more things about the world, there are some things that it can never explain. For this reason, such a god is often called "a god of the gaps": it is defined by the gaps in our scientific knowledge. And Flew is not a scientist: he must depend on others for the data on which he bases his opinion.

We need to distinguish between two kinds of gap. One is the "existential gap" - why is there anything rather than nothing? I've been debating this with a colleague in our blogs; you can check them out for yourself. The other is the explanatory gap: are their properties of the world which cannot be explained? (We distinguish these because in a synthetic - rather than analytic - proposition it doesn't make sense for "existence" to be a property.)

I've elaborated on Flew's recent position, and the problems with it, in my latest blog entry on the subject.

Hope this helps.

'... which means we should no longer treat him as an expert on this subject'. Well, yes. But we should never have treated him as an expert on this subject. Flew is not a scientist, and never has been. He doesn't seem to understand science. Here are two of his (linked) absurd assertions:
"It is simply out of the question that the first living matter evolved out of dead matter ... There must have been some intelligence".

Sorry, Flew: it is not out of the question, and there is no 'must' about it. Do leave science to scientists. And by the way: this 'must' puts in question not only your claim to have the slightest competence to talk about science, but also your claim to be a serious philosopher.

Charlie,

You say:

"I think that logic dictates the existence of God and that science will support it".

I have to take issue with both parts:

a. Logic does not support, never mind dictate, the existence of god any more than it dictates his/her/its absence. Logic seeks rational causes. To a large extent it is a human construct, and probably culturally contingent.

b. Science does not develop on logic, but on discovering observable facts. Aristo was sure, on logical grounds, that heavy objects fall faster than light ones (because of their 'tendency' towards their 'natural place'). It took Galileo and his experiments (probably on inclined planes rather than from the top of the tower of Pisa, but maybe the latter nevertheless) to prove that this logic was wrong.

"chance doesn't exist as a force for cause" - not so. Chance is a loaded word, and needs to be defined mathematically in terms of probability theory, but within its own parameters it most certainly acts as a causative force insofar as we know the real 'cause' of anything. In fact, science shies away from ultimate causes. It tends to state that if A happens, B will happen: it is descriptive. Of course it has predictive power, but always qualifies it by specifying particular circumstances. 'Because' is really convenient shorthand for mathematical formulae, just as 'field' is. We don't really know what a field is, nor do we know what 'cause' is.
But let's leave chaos theory for another day ...

"But we should never have treated him as an expert on this subject." Well, there are many arguments pro and con the existence of god, and Flew is/was certainly qualified to address the metaphysical arguments. Hard-core materialists often dismiss all of these out of hand, but it's worth demonstrating that they are broken, if only because for some people they simply trump the empirical.

I just today heard about this, and out of curiosity did some research.

The original A.P. wire mentions Flew's admission came during a forum sponsored by Ron Abraham Varghese's Institute for Metascientific Research. I Googled this Institute since I expect a 'research institute', particularly one dedicated to metascience (whatever THAT is!), to have a homepage. No homepage. However, google does link to a page (http://www.thewonderoftheworld.com/newsrelease-flew.php) that has a blurb from Varghese, parts of which turn up in the A.P. news articles.

I noticed several curiosities in this article. First off, this forum sponsored by IMR took place 'earlier this year', dated, by various other articles, as May. Now why, if this is such big news now, did it take SIX MONTHS to hit the papers?

The answer can be found by going up a directory in the link I posted above. It turns out that http://www.thewonderoftheworld.com is the homepage for Verghese's newest book, 'The Wonder of the World: A Journey from Modern Science to the Mind of God'. Interesting, isn't it, that this news, which happened at a forum for the Institute for Metascientific Research is not posted on IMR's homepage (since they don't have one), but on the homepage for the Institute's founder's newest book?

The 'news' that Flew, a man whom Varghese describes as the "World's Most Famous Atheist", now believes in God, half a year after the supposed event and two weeks before Christmas, and the tie-in with Varghese's book are no coincidence. This 'news' is nothing more than a shameful ploy to sell more copies during the holiday shopping season.

Here is a link to an interview that Anthony Flew gave. In it Flew cites big bang cosmology,
fine tuning and Intelligent Design arguments as reasons for his change in position. In the interview Flew states he rejects revelatory religion and takes a theistic or deistic position.

Just a few comments on Mr. Arnold's eloquent response:

"And Flew is not a scientist: he must depend on others for the data on which he bases his opinion". Depending on others for data is a key component in the progression of science. The goal is for others (scientists and non-scientists) to be able to depend on evidence which can be replicated by others. This is why peer review is a key component of science, and nobody that I am aware of refutes the scientific observations on which Flew bases his change of mind/heart. The fact that Flew is not a DNA scientist does not preclude him from understanding the replicable work that other DNA scientists have performed.

If I can venture insight into the DNA evidence that Flew cites (although I haven't spoken personally with him), it is clear that even at the monocellular level of biology, the DNA sequence acts as a very complex message, guiding the activities of sub-cellular components and reacting to stimuli to revise it's messages.

At a logical level, one has to ask the question: can there be a message without an author? Even if, through additional scientific research, we are able to understand the language of the DNA message, doesn't the existence of the language/messaging system conclusively point to an author?

This conclusion doesn't really fit into the "incredulity" theory that you reference, because there is a difference between "the world is so amazing, there MUST have been a creator" and "I have seen undeniable evidence that encoded messages exist which control life at the sub-cellular level, therefore there must be an author to this message". While the difference may sound subtle, the philosophical implications - that there are DNA messages that must have an author - are earthshaking to one who believes that no such author exists.

The above comment by kcbmc seems to rely on ambiguity and/or question-begging.

That is, if one refers to something as a 'message', then one may mean a) simply that it contains (or seems to contain) some data that can be interpreted; _or_ one may mean b) that it contains some data that was actually put there by an author.

But when one says "the DNA sequence acts as a very complex message," it is not at all clear which of these senses of 'message' is being used.

Certainly the DNA sequence contains data, so using 'meaning' in the first sense above is accurate. Note though, that in this sense, the 'message' encoded in DNA does not in any way "point to an author" (let alone "conclusively" so). On the other hand, if one is using 'message' in the second sense above, then, while such does "point to an author", it does so _by_ _definition_, which means that one is begging the question by referring to it as a 'message'.

Sorry, the beginning of the last paragraph above should be: "Certainly the DNA sequence contains data, so using **'message'** in the first sense..."

GBY put it pretty well, so I guess I don't have to say much more about KCBMC's piece. The use of the term "message" is deliberately question-begging. Cf. "DNA looks like a program, so there must be a programmer", "DNA looks like a recipe, so there must be a chef".

Also worth reading: Dennett's "The Intentional Stance", on minds and thermostats....

At least we got past the part that dismisses Flew's change in heart because "he is not a scientist". Now to his second observation: He indicated that the complexity of DNA, even in single-cell organisms, was too complex to have ocurred randomly. Statistically, the probability that a system this complex could have been randomly created is inconcievable. Flew indicates that this piece of evidence was the compelling event that changed his mind. Do you postulate that it IS reasonable to expect that DNA was created through random energy applied to random chemicals?

One problem is that it is not at all clear what exactly is meant by "too complex to have occurred randomly", and more specifically, what is being implied by 'occurred randomly'.

That is, it does not seem to be required that DNA, in its current form, simply arose fully-fledged from nothing. Indeed, there are some theories (about which my knowledge is somewhat limited, I must admit) that suggest how "life" could have arisen prior to DNA, with DNA itself coming later.

Further, even if one believes that DNA must have sprung up in something like its present form, one must be _very_ careful in using an argument from improbability. A probability of 1/1000 does _not_ mean that one will have 999 failures and finally on the 1000th occurence there will be success. Rather, something with a probability of 1/1000 may occur in the very _first_ attempt.

Which means that even an extraordinarily low probability of DNA arising "by chance" is not an argument against it having occurred on Earth. If such "by chance" is required, and if the probability is exceedingly low, then that means that there is close to zero chance of finding life (at least life based on DNA) elsewhere in the universe, but that is a different issue.

It seems ironic, does it not, for KCBMC to agree that Flew is "not a scientist", and then to discuss his views on the unlikelihood of the emergence of DNA without referring to those who actually ARE scientists working in the field.

The technical term for the subject is "exobiology", which includes both the search for life outside our planet and also the study of prebiotic conditions on Earth. It would be good if Flew could immerse himself in this material before getting seduced by notions of irreducible complexity (an ID code for a "god of the gaps").

A good layman's introduction to the hard science of exobiology can be found in this 1996 interview - http://www.accessexcellence.org/WN/NM/miller.html - with Stanley Miller, the author of the famous "primordial soup" experiment in 1953.

fby, your feable attempt to minimize the reality of the statistical improbability of life occuring spontateously is comical. 1/1000? If it were anywhere near 1/1000, life would be springing up all over. In the last analysis I saw (this was a few years ago, I admit), you would have to put over 20 zeroes behind the 1 to begin to get close to how low the probability is. How could anybody put their faith in a belief system that is so improbable? This is why Flew changed - it is only logical to do so when faced with the facts.

It is clear that you have your own religion, and that's ok. You have put your faith in a scientifically impossible fantasy, while most others put their faith in an unprovable deity. Just two different versions of religion/faith that can not be proven and both seem illogical to the objective observer.

No need to respond. I won't be back. I know religious bigotry when I see it.

I didn't say that the probability of DNA arising "randomly" was 1/1000 -- no doubt the estimated probability is something astronomically higher.

That was merely an example that was easy to type and could be used to illustrate an issue relating to probability. The same issue remains regardless of the numbers: a probability of 1/10e75 does not mean that one will see (10e75 - 1) failures finally followed by success; rather an outcome with probabability 1/10e75 could occur on the very first attempt. And it is for that reason that one must be very careful in making an argument from improbability.

Probabilistic argument may work when one can assign probabilities to different events, theories, etc. -- similarly to Ockham's Razor. That is, if one has two possible causes, one of which has a higher probability than the other, then that with the higher probability is more probably right.

But that doesn't seem to be the case in this argument. One can't even begin to estimate the probability of a "creator", so no comparison can be made. The argument seems to be "the probability is low, therefore it can't have happened", which is neither a sensible use of probabilty nor a valid argument.

I planned on not returning, but gby made it too obvious.

You are coming very close to the brink upon which Mr. Flew stood not too long ago. Humanly speaking, 1 chance in 10*20 is the same thing as "impossible". In scientific terms we try not to use the word "impossible", however. Your belief in such an event puts you at the pinnacle of intellectual dishonesty - the belief in a theory that is beyond plausibility.

It is this confrontation with intellectual honesty upon which Mr. Flew changed his position. The level of absurdity is too much for a thinking individual to sustain - lest you fall into the catogory of delusional or denial.

I don't know where these numbers came from, but neither GBY or KCBMC has any warrant to toss them around. In the absence of a mechanism, we have no basis for assigning any probabilities. I refer again to Stanley Miller's famous experiment - see the link in my earlier comment. I don't know what a priori probabilities would have been given for the spontaneous formation of amino acids, but we now know that the probability is 1. The experiment is quite repeatable.

Now if Flew had cited peer-reviewed research into abiogenesis, and then said, "Based on my understanding of this work, I see a gap that science is most unlikely to be able to fill; I therefore have to consider the role of an external agent," I'd have been able to respect that. I'd disagree, but that's OK - science is a process for resolving disagreements over hypotheses. But he didn't: he endorsed Schroeder's bizarre attempt to reinterpret Genesis as an account of cosmology. That's just depressing.

The sad truth is that some (most) people aren't actually interested in letting science uncover the truth, whether it be complete or gappy. Many theists don't want there to be a complete account of life, presumably because they believe it weakens the basis for their faith. (It shouldn't, any more than evolution did. Oh, wait....) And many atheists want there to be a full scientific account so that they can use this to justify their atheism. (It doesn't - and nor would a narrative gap be proof of theism. People are so stuck in these dichotomous ways of thinking.)

However, given the relatively short time that science has been addressing abiogenesis. it seems inappropriate to declare that the game is over. Why all these expectations of instant gratification?

Happy New Year

Above, kcbmc wrote: "1 chance in 10*20 is the same thing as 'impossible'." This is utter nonsense. If the probability is 1/10e20 that a molecule of "air" in this room is hydrogen sulfide, then it approaches certainty that I will be inhaling at least one such molecule with every breath.

Further, as already noted, this sort of argument betrays a lack of understanding both of probability itself and of the nature of probabilistic argument. Probabilistic argument works only when one can say that the probability of X is greater than the probability of Y, which makes such utterly useless absent some specification of the probability of a "creator".

As for "the numbers" referred to by Geoff Arnold, my numbers are pulled from out of thin air. As I already wrote, they are merely examples to illustrate the nature of probability. I have no idea what probabilities are claimed for "DNA arising by chance" (and, as already noted, I don't consider the 'chance' argument to be required). Still further, though I am not familiar with the current research, I strongly suspect that, like the examples of "the probability of life elsewhere in the universe", any computations of "the probability of DNA arising by chance" are based on far too many untested assumptions to be particularly meaningful, regardless of what number might be computed.

If it isn't clear, 'gmb' and 'gby' represent the same individual. I have been assigned different TLAs in different places, so my apologies.

Thanks. The problem with numbers pulled out of the air as examples is that they tend to confuse the statistically challenged, as we've seen.

While I'm writing, I must say that one of the other things that peeves me is the way people label this presumed gap-filling agent as "god". Now to his credit, Flew has said that he's thinking of "a distant, impersonal 'prime mover.' It might not even be conscious, but a mere force". But we all know that when Varghese trumpets, "World's Most Famous Atheist Accepts Existence of God, Cites Modern Science!", his "God" is far from the parsimonious entity that Flew talks about. This rampant equivocation is simply dishonest.

Well, to be fair, the "prime mover" is one of the standard god-attributes, so labelling such 'god' seems to be not entirely beyond the pale. It seems more or less similar to the "creator" or "great architect" version of 'god'.

Further, even as a sort of atheist myself, I can understand how someone might believe in a "god" such as this, and really do reserve judgment on the matter (as opposed to certain other god-candidates that I assert do not exist, in the same way that I assert that unicorns and round squares do not exist). I have no positive belief in a "prime mover", as such seems unnecessary -- and as something of a pragmaticist, such ideas that have no possible measureable effect strike me as vacuous, at best -- but I won't deny the possibility of the existence of such an entity.

That said... first, to suggest that such an entity is demonstrated, or required, by modern science, is just nonsense. And second, as noted above, such a "god" has very little in common with the "gods" postulated by most religious believers, and indeed, belief in such a "god" would be seen as a form of Deism, and therefore heresy, by at least some subset thereof.

I had the opportunity to do a readings course in the mid-1980's with Anthony Flew focusing on Swinburne's defense of theism.

During one of our sessions we talked about Thaxton's proto-intelligent design arguments based on the explanatory challenges posed by abiogensis. I recall Professor Flew expressing similar doubts about a comprehensive explanation of the orgins of life within a purely naturalistic Darwinian framework at that time. However, he did not go beyond these doubts to express belief in any sort of supra-personal agentic explanation to fill in the explanatory gap.

Thanks, Bill. And based on some of his comments (see above), Flew isn't thinking of a "supra-personal agent": simply the most parsimonious entity necessary to bridge the gap. Maybe. Anyway, I refuse to buy Varghese's book; I'll wait for the new edition of "God and Philosophy".

Readers of this thread are referred to my latest post on the subject: http://www.geoffarnold.com/mt-archives/000382.html

The design inference is very realistic when you consider that DNA is a language in the form of an immense set of instructions that must be interpreted in order for it to have a purpose. Language is the result of intelligence at work… which is not begging the question; instead it is a self evident inference. Speaking of begging a question, I have a question that I am begging anyone to answer: where does intelligence come from? The fact that we can learn a language is nearly a miracle in itself. (I believe in miracles).

If you look at my latest posting on Flew, you'll see that I refer to a tutorial by Ian Musgrave. This explains the basis for the plausible non-designed emergence of DNA. As for the rest of BAM's comments, they seem to be question-begging (circular). Rather than presupposing intelligence and miracles, why not read some evolutionary biology to understand how intelligence evolved without the need for any miracles at all?

Thanks Geoff, I'll read Ian's tutorial. The design inference concerning the origin of life is no more circular than looking at a space shuttle and coming to the conclusion that intelligence is responsible for its existence. If that is circular reasoning, I am missing something. Of course I am not saying that a miracle is responsible for our existence either. I would define a miracle as supernatural intervention. There are possible metaphysical implications if we suggest that a higher intelligence is responsible for our existence but what this discussion seems to be about is the question of how (or if) life spontaneously came into existence. Louis Pasteur was a great scientist who made many huge contributions that advanced our understanding of biology. He proved using the scientific method that spontaneous life is impossible.

It is not my goal to prove the existence of God. Likewise, you can’t disprove something that you can’t prove (aka “universal negative”), that would be completely illogical. For someone to come to the conclusion that there is no God is foolish. You may choose to believe that there is no God, but that does not make it so. There is nothing circular about that either, it is just impossible to refute.

Could intelligence have evolved? Not in the natural selection sense. Natural selection (microevolution) works on living matter, organisms. Intelligence exists in the mind, there is no mechanism that produces it, no way to explain its existence, but yet the universe is full of evidence that it exists. Take your computer hard drive and format it, it will be empty but it will weigh exactly the same as it did when it was loaded with data. When data is organized into something that makes sense, it may even do something (such as word processing), we see intelligence at work. The human body is infinitely more complex that anything man has ever designed and built with all of his intelligence. Are you saying we are supposed to ignore the design inference? Organisms are not observed evolving from lower to higher complexity without something being added… intelligence. This is the thing that Anthony Flew (and George Wald) had to recognize in order to advance any further intellectually. Poor feeble minds we have…

Why is the idea of God so dangerous to the athiest?Why after so many years of debate and clear thought on all sides do athiest disregard any logic other than there own.Bieng a former athiest and then studing philosophy,theology,and science for the last 12 years has given me a bit of insight.
To Question the reality of God comes from the darkness of men.To put it another way, men who hate the idea of God and do Anything to discredit it are cleary living in this logic for there own well being.
Logic,thought,argument,where do they come from?The idea of eternity,forever and everything not material must come from somewhere...From our minds?How about our imaginations?
No,I think it is quite clear that rational,open,unbiased minds see the work of God everywhere.
If logical men and women would open their hearts to the possibillty of a creator they would see the light of God shining through.
The foolishness of God is greater than the logic of mere men....More later
clint

There are specific features that cause us to recognize prior intelligent activity. The reliable, empirical and scientifically rigorous criteria we employ are improbability (complexity) and specification (objective patterns). We conclude that what we observe is the product of intelligence when it meets the criterion of improbability and specification. This equates to information. Astronomers involved with SETI recognize that if they ever encounter a radio signal from a distant galaxy that is encoded with information it would confirm the existence of intelligent life beyond the earth.

There is nothing in the known universe that stores and processes more information as efficiently as the DNA molecule. Everything we know suggests that information rich systems are the product of intelligence. The argument is not based on what we don’t know; it is based on what we know. We know that there is no natural cause that produces information. Not natural selection, not self organizational processes and not pure chance. Yet we know that intelligence produces information, so when we infer design from the presence of information in DNA we are making an inference to the best explanation. When we observe an information rich system like DNA we can infer that intelligence played a role in the origin of that system even though we weren’t there to observe the system coming into existence.

The argument for intelligent design is based on observation of the facts. That is my definition of good science. The way we conclude intelligent design for the bacterial flagellum is the same way we conclude intelligent design for the space shuttle. The reasoning is the same for biological machines as it is for manmade machines. The idea of intelligent design is completely scientific. I don’t care if the space shuttle can’t have baby space shuttles. Given that we can not demonstrate ID (unless the designer appears and shows us how he did it) is a small problem, the bigger problem for evolutionists is that you can not disprove something that you can not prove. You can say that ID is not science because it is not falsifiable but I think that would be foolish, because there is a lot more substance in good science apart from whether or not something is falsifiable. Men are convicted in a court of law based on a preponderance of circumstantial evidence even though no one observed the crime.

“Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed but evolved.” (Francis Crick, Nobel Laureate, DNA Research). Methodological Naturalism does exclude design as a cause, this is why so many evolutionary scientists are dogmatic about rejecting ID as a legitimate science. They have boxed themselves in so that their search for truth will be limited. ID scientists recognize that design is a new tool that belongs in the toolkit of science. Intelligent causes are real, and they leave evidence of their existence. When you look at the evidence in a living cell objectively, without ruling out design, design leaps up as the most likely explanation. If we have to be design engineers to understand it, so be it.

Much of what I have discussed is paraphrased from a video that is available at http://www.illustramedia.com/ called “Unlocking the Mystery of Life”. This is the one that evolutionists don’t want you to see. In fact PBS is trying to suppress this documentary which is actually drawing more attention to it, oh darn. In the same spirit that John Kerry’s campaign sued to keep “Stolen Honor” from getting out, evolutionists are trying to keep “Unlocking the Mystery of Life” from getting air time. I know what Kerry was afraid of: THE TRUTH. I think I know what evolutionists are afraid of: their secularist agenda will be thwarted if ID is accepted by too many folks. Anyhow… “Unlocking the Mystery of Life” is fascinating and I highly recommend it.

Well, I'm sorry, but I find this wholly unconvincing. There is no argument here, merely a string of assertions. In particular, the following fragment is pure question-begging:

"There is nothing in the known universe that stores and processes more information as efficiently as the DNA molecule. Everything we know suggests that information rich systems are the product of intelligence. The argument is not based on what we don’t know; it is based on what we know. We know that there is no natural cause that produces information."

We don't "know" any of that at all. Moreover it's entirely unclear how one is supposed to interpret "natural" and "information" here. The presumption of ID has the cute effect of allowing authors like BAM to treat every living organism as "unnatual", which makes the whole thing vanish in a puff of self-annihilation. What would BAM admit as a natural mechanism that one could test as an information-producer?

The final paragraph is pure conspiracy-theory nonsense: the words "suppress" and "afraid" repeated ad infinitum are no substitute for a real argument.

BAM said that he'd read Ian Musgrave's tutorial: if he did, this posting provides no evidence that he learned from it.

Anyway, this thread is over a month old; unless someone has real data to offer, we should drop it. I plan to read Pennock's "Intelligent Design Creationism and Its Critics: Philosophical, Theological, and Scientific Perspectives", and I recommend it to other participants to this thread.

Those who might want to read what Flew himself is saying on the matter can go to http://www.biola.edu/antonyflew/flew-interview.pdf

In this interview Flew seems to be still of sound mind and makes some cogent points. He still maintains that there is no such thing a revealed religion and still "hope[s] and believe[s] there's no possibility of an afterlife." Nonetheless, he puts forth a good argument that the cosmos was planned and executed by a disigner.

BTW, those who think as Flew might find the statement just below the "Comments" box on this page interesting: "Please copy the grey, four digit security code into the text box below. This is to confirm that you are a human being and not a robot."
It seems that the mere copying of a four-digit number is sufficient to prove the humanness of this writer and the conscious and intentional (I'll not claim "intelligent") design of my comments; DNA as proof of an intelligent disigner, however, is too great a stretch of the imagination. That baffles me.

The Flew interview cited by Jim Simmons has a cover letter dated December 9, 2004. As this letter indicates, the material in the interview was developed over the preceding 9-11 months. As I reported in http://www.geoffarnold.com/mt-archives/000382.html , Flew has subsequently (December 29, 2004) indicated that he has retracted at least one of the positions discussed in the interview.

I am a first year Philosophy student..... My teacher mentioned about this person named Anthony Flew few days ago about him, a Atheist suddently turned into religion...
Therefore I try searching on the web looking about his info and I came to this site.... I got a question, Why did he become a believer of God? My teacher said that he was one of the world famous atheist.... Even he was shocked when he heard it....

Why did Flew start believing in God? Because he's going senile. Read this (http://www.newhumanist.org.uk/news_comments.php?id=1428_0_20_0_C) then listen to the interview

Throughout history, God has intervened in people's lives and made Himself known to them. Anthony Flew's life is no different. God's greatest revelation to mankind is when He walked the earth as a man in the person of Jesus Christ. Anthony Flew's next revelation will be that not only is there a God in heaven, but this God loves him and longs for relationship with Anthony Flew. God is a good God! Just because someone "believes" they are a fish, it doesn't make them one. Just because someone "believes" there is no God, or hasn't encountered Him yet, doesn't mean He doesn't exist. God is real and He has a plan and purpose for each and every human being he created, including Anthony Flew.

Above someone objected to a statement (attributed to Mr. Flew) "It is simply out of the question that the first living matter evolved out of dead matter ... There must have been some intelligence".

Well, evolution refers to modification with descent. IOW, only things that reproduce can "evolve." So the concept of the "first living things" evolving from dead matter is absurd on its face. No matter where you believe the first living things came from, they could not have "evolved."

Greg

One fact that seems to be overlooked is tht all living things are the product of 3 1/2 billion years of selection. There is no good reaon to think that the current mechanism of DNA replication and protein syntheis must have sprung into existence as they currently are. BAM looks at the eukaryotic cell and sees a space shutle, but the first replicators may have been more like a paper airplane.

Geoff, I did read Ian M’s tutorial. I found it wholly unconvincing. Simple strings of amino acids could not have gradually evolved to a point that would support the first living organism. Darwin said “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous successive slight modifications my theory would absolutely break down.” Bye bye Darwin! In addition, Louis Pasteur’s research proved that spontaneous life is impossible, how conveniently we forget his work.

Let’s say that all of the amino acids that are required for the simplest protein molecule are able to form by chance (proteins don’t self assemble, but lets suggest that they could). Now that they are lined up in a complex chain it must have a purpose, first it needs to do something simple like… be alive. Then, this protein must get together with other proteins that came together at the same exact time in order for them to start working together on the first living cell that does something, but has no real purpose because there is no organic system for this cell to survive within.

In addition, lets recognize that this first living organism must reproduce. If the first one doesn’t reproduce successfully, it will be unable to pass on the instructions to the future generations, it will die and the whole process must start all over again until “it” figures out how to reproduce.

The scenario is impossible without the DNA, but how did those instructions get there in the first reproducing cell? In other words, the first cell must have recognized the need to procreate and would have had to program itself to do so. That must have been one very “smart” simple cell. This contradicts reason. Though Intelligent Design appears to be beyond reason… at least it doesn’t contradict reason as evolution does. We don’t begin to understand the immensely complex instructions for cell division as smart as we think we are. Just one small part of a huge and complex puzzle.

Geoff, I would also recommend to you the book “The Hidden Face of God”. It is one of the books that Anthony Flew read, which persuaded him that there might be a God. I am about half way through it. It is a Fantastic work. Gerald Schroeder (the author) takes the misconception that science disproves God, and turns it on its head.

Many would be philosophers have reached the crossroad where they realize that there is no need to find deeper meanings (but we do) in the plain teaching of God’s science. This approach enables the Creator’s “students” to find the truth, which is what we are looking for. There is no competition between spirituality and science, the two are complementary, as in the root “to complete.” When you begin to see the universe in this light, it is fantastic, amazing and wondrous to behold. This is as God intended it to be.

Obviously, I am coming into this thread very late, but I only recently discovered it. I have always found these kinds of discussions interesting, although I am not sure they do much to alter anyone's position on these matters.

First of all, I confess to coming down on the deist side of the question, but I can understand that others can intellectually come down on the atheist side.

What troubles me is when deists or Christians are maligned as mindless, primitive believers of myths. Nor do I approve of deists who similarly accuse atheists. These are signs of people who are far too insecure in their position to actually discuss the issues on an intellectual level.

On a purely intellectual level, I think there is available information by which reasonably intelligent people can reach either position. However, I do not think the available information provides clear and convincing evidence and perhaps not even a preponderance of evidence upon which one could make a determination.

On the intellectual level, we are mostly reaching our conclusions based on what, in law, is called “substantial evidence.” I’m not certain a discussion of quantum of evidence is useful because some people reach their conclusion on this issue and no quantum of evidence would change their mind, while others reach a conclusion that is hardly based on any quantum of evidence.

One of the problems we all have is trying to honestly and accurately separate that which we know from that which we believe. Often, people on both sides of this issue have a belief and treat that as knowledge.

No one intellectually comes to his or her position on the existence of God solely by inspection of hard core, scientific data. Our life experience, our philosophies, our upbringing, those with whom we have come into contact are all contributing factors in the development of that position. And let us not forget that Christians contend they have also had a spirtual influence as a factor. The point here is that anyone who believes he or she has come to their position based solely on scientific data is probably as illogical as those who have come to their position based on no scientific consideration.

No one really KNOWS how the universe got here or how life began. To the best of my education, it seems only two possible explanations have ever been proffered by the pundits who comment on this enigma. One explanation is that it just happened and the other is that some intelligence caused it. I’m sorry to over-simplify in this way, but all explanations eventually reduce down to these common denominators.

Flew seems to have determined that the more information he has gathered, the more he understands how little he actually knows. It appears he has found that he is no longer able to categorically and adamantly deny the potential for some intelligent cause of the universe and life any more than I am able to guarantee the existence of God.

The thing is, whether one is a deist or one is an atheist, his or her conclusion is a belief, not a fact. I do not think believer and non-believer are accurate nomenclature for theists and atheists.

Each believes what he or she believes based on the combined influences that have come into their life and the amount of weight which they have given to those various influences.

Neither deists nor atheists are mindless, non-thinking, closed minded, blind people based solely on the determination they have made. There are mindless, non-thinking , closed minded, blind people found in both schools of thought. I hope I am not one of them.

Dayton Turner is entering a bit late, as he(?) says; the debate has moved on a bit. I suggest running a search for "Flew" on my blog - http://www.geoffarnold.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=1&search=Flew - and reading the entries in reverse order. AS you see, Flew has backtracked considerably on his earlier acceptance of theism/deism.

I LOVE the last commentary / summation; debating whether I could bear yet another 'once more into the breach' on this topic -- this decided me. I, too, have long ago concluded that 'arguments ' concerning existence / non-existence of god(s) were NOWADAYS especially, jejune when not downright sophomoric (maybe interesting and stimulating on that level -- bright sophomores, oh well, even more advanced academic types !)

I suspect G. B. Shaw had it about right: " We use our Reason only to support our prejudices."

And yes, I accept the Philosophy 101 -102 warhorse that it's fruitless to try to prove a negative.(What do you mean by 'god'? What do you mean by proof? intelligence? design and chance? etc. )

My big late-blooming discovery here, which I consider my special 'twist' on the subject is this: It strikes me ( a free-thinker and humanist, probably technically an old-fashioned agnostic )that some atheists-I-have-known (not all ) are AS EMOTIONALLY, DOGMATICALLY TIED TO THEIR BELIEF IN 'NOT-GOD' as any garden-variety fundamentalist Baptist or Roman Catholic is to theirs; not open-minded at all.

This is a bit of a sore point with me recently, as I have been associated with free-thinking and humanist groups ( a stimulating and rewarding experience, mostly ), but I have felt bound to enunciate what I call the humanist conundrum
( not to be construed as a sweeping judgement of all humanists ): How can one be any kind of 'humanist' and express boundless contempt and superciliousness, and militate endlessly against those beliefs, customs and attitudes of those 'masses' of benighted humans, to whom the belief in transcendence, god(s),the mystical is daily bread and drink, as well as heartfelt existential meaning in life? ( whether all such beliefs are naive and crudely false. In any event, there is a vast and in-depth, scientific literature in anthropology, psychology, and sociology as to WHY people through endless ages -- and still -- cling to 'irrational' beliefs, and how same function in a given society )

What most often is left out of the fray: whether God (gods) exist or not, there is an

IDEA OF GOD (no, I am not a card-carrying Platonist); which, furthermore, for good or ill, is overwhelmingly important,gut-level, existentially, to countless millions of washed or unwashed humanity ( see above-mentioned literature! )

BEYOND ALL OF WHICH -- the big issue for me (being quite involved a good portion of my adult thinking life -- and yet -- in linguistic philosophy, philosophy of language, semantics ):What exactly do you mean by 'God ' ?
What is the object, exactly, you're so certain does not exist? Why is it important to believe one way or the other?

( Yes I know the 'tantum religio potuit suadere malorum' --up UNTIL THE TWENTIETH CENTURY -- I acknowledge and am sickened at the unspeakable horrors, inhumanity, stupidity, etc., etc. in the name of Christian and other religions; but in the Twentieth Century,and ours, the more than double-the-bid of horrors in the name of political ideologies (left, right and other, no-names, please) that were supposedly focused on the human, and anti-God, anti-religious, and purported to SAVE mankind from his superstitions and oppression ).AN article I had been warmly invited and encouraged to write was discreetly censored, then dismissed when I pointed this out in a humanist publication.

And whether you're right or wrong, does it make you or anyone else who shares your beliefs a better person? Sometimes in the literature, and in discussions, I get the impression that DISbelief in God (god/s, the supernatural ) will automatically make one a better, more caring and compassionate person; I wonder -- tho' I have no doubt that it's true in some cases.In fact, I must go so far as to say that militating against any 'supernatural' or mystical, religious belief seems to have become more important for some 'humanists' that PRACTICAL works of support for fellow humans -- the homeless, the hungry and those bereft of any medical care or human comfort.

Seriously, has anyone done any SCIENTIFIC, longitudinal studies in the life-course of atheists, free-thinkers, etc.? I mean, aside from Ayn Rand, Frank Lloyd, Nietzsche and M. M. O'Hare, has there been any in-depth evaluation of the quality of life, generosity and compassionate humanity of the same?If not, I hereby propose ...

Dear Mr. Arnold!
You wrote in Dec. 04 that “The problem that Flew faces is that the Teleological/design argument is essentially an "argument from incredulity" - that one cannot imagine how the world could have arisen without a designer, and so there must have been one. It relies on the conviction that while science is continually explaining more and more things about the world, there are some things that it can never explain. For this reason, such a god is often called "a god of the gaps": it is defined by the gaps in our scientific knowledge.”

You are correct in that Dr. Flew based his initial position on the “argument from incredulity.” But this is only the subjective side of the argument. The objective side has to do with the law of causality, or more precisely, of adequate causality. What matters is not what one, you or Dr Flew believes or keeps credible or imaginable, but what is possible in the order of nature, and what requires adequate cause to be not only believable, but at all possible.

So, while Dr. Flew in his earlier books rejected God because the argument, that “since one cannot imagine how the world could have arisen without a designer, and so there must have been one” is clearly insufficient. But as he grew older and wiser, he recognized that this argument is a sort of reverse ontologism: “to decide the existence of a supreme Designer on my ability to imagine or not to imagine something “ does not make sense.

So, instead of treating the question as a purely mental gymnastics, he re-phrased it: can a complex living being, able not only to reproduce but even heal itself, come about without an intelligent Designer? His answer was, whether one can imagine a world without a Designer or not, living beings cannot come into being without a Designer!

I ask that you respond to this question: “can a complex living and reproducing being come about without an intelligent designer?” If yes, how? Please give adequate causes. .Chance is not an adequate cause in the scientific world!

Thanks in advance for your response..

Dr. Sandor Balogh

Why, when Flew was a stern atheist you all credited him and asserted all of his claims,but now when he has a sudden change of heart , you ridicule him and use the same statements that he made concerning the non-existence of a god, with which I might add, you also supported, to prove his unqualification in the matter? Wouldn't it seem too that you all are also unqualified in the matter since you were in agreement with a fellow unqualified individual up until recently ?

It's amazing. Dr. Flew was widely accepted as an unbiased intellectual by his peers when he professed atheistic theology. But when the evidence leads him towards God he is attacked by his own.

Purpose of life has and always been the variable that dumfounds atheist minds. Flew was and is courageous enough to recognize that 'Chance' is and never will be an expalnation for the first evidence of 'Life' already wanting, needing, and programmed to survive, i.e. reproduce.

"It's amazing. Dr. Flew was widely accepted as an unbiased intellectual by his peers when he professed atheistic theology. But when the evidence leads him towards God he is attacked by his own."

No, when Flew made valid arguments he was highly regarded, and when he offered fallacious ones he was not. Perhaps we should let him have the last word:

"I have made a fool of myself by believing that there were no presentable theories of the development of inanimate matter up to the first living creature capable of reproduction."

"So, instead of treating the question as a purely mental gymnastics, he re-phrased it: can a complex living being, able not only to reproduce but even heal itself, come about without an intelligent Designer? His answer was, whether one can imagine a world without a Designer or not, living beings cannot come into being without a Designer!"

What of it? His answer was based on argumentum ad ignorantiam.

"I ask that you respond to this question: “can a complex living and reproducing being come about without an intelligent designer?”"

Probably.

"If yes, how? Please give adequate causes."

Read the scientific literature on abiogenesis. the answer doesn't fit in this little box.

"Chance is not an adequate cause in the scientific world!"

Brownian motion, thermodynamics, and chaos theory, and quantum mechanics are just a few places of the many places where it is.