Famous Atheist Now Believes in God

[Hedons]

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=315976

One of World's Leading Atheists Now Believes in God, More or Less, Based on Scientific Evidence

The Associated Press

NEW YORK Dec 9, 2004 — A British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion of atheism for more than a half-century has changed his mind. He now believes in God more or less based on scientific evidence, and says so on a video released Thursday.

At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature, Flew said in a telephone interview from England.

Flew said he's best labeled a deist like Thomas Jefferson, whose God was not actively involved in people's lives.

"I'm thinking of a God very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam, because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins," he said. "It could be a person in the sense of a being that has intelligence and a purpose, I suppose."

Flew first made his mark with the 1950 article "Theology and Falsification," based on a paper for the Socratic Club, a weekly Oxford religious forum led by writer and Christian thinker C.S. Lewis.

Over the years, Flew proclaimed the lack of evidence for God while teaching at Oxford, Aberdeen, Keele, and Reading universities in Britain, in visits to numerous U.S. and Canadian campuses and in books, articles, lectures and debates.

There was no one moment of change but a gradual conclusion over recent months for Flew, a spry man who still does not believe in an afterlife.

Yet biologists' investigation of DNA "has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved," Flew says in the new video, "Has Science Discovered God?"

The video draws from a New York discussion last May organized by author Roy Abraham Varghese's Institute for Metascientific Research in Garland, Texas. Participants were Flew; Varghese; Israeli physicist Gerald Schroeder, an Orthodox Jew; and Roman Catholic philosopher John Haldane of Scotland's University of St. Andrews.

The first hint of Flew's turn was a letter to the August-September issue of Britain's Philosophy Now magazine. "It has become inordinately difficult even to begin to think about constructing a naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first reproducing organism," he wrote.

The letter commended arguments in Schroeder's "The Hidden Face of God" and "The Wonder of the World" by Varghese, an Eastern Rite Catholic layman.

This week, Flew finished writing the first formal account of his new outlook for the introduction to a new edition of his "God and Philosophy," scheduled for release next year by Prometheus Press.

Prometheus specializes in skeptical thought, but if his belief upsets people, well "that's too bad," Flew said. "My whole life has been guided by the principle of Plato's Socrates: Follow the evidence, wherever it leads."

Last week, Richard Carrier, a writer and Columbia University graduate student, posted new material based on correspondence with Flew on the atheistic www.infidels.org Web page. Carrier assured atheists that Flew accepts only a "minimal God" and believes in no afterlife.

Flew's "name and stature are big. Whenever you hear people talk about atheists, Flew always comes up," Carrier said. Still, when it comes to Flew's reversal, "apart from curiosity, I don't think it's like a big deal."

Flew told The Associated Press his current ideas have some similarity with American "intelligent design" theorists, who see evidence for a guiding force in the construction of the universe. He accepts Darwinian evolution but doubts it can explain the ultimate origins of life.

A Methodist minister's son, Flew became an atheist at 15.

Early in his career, he argued that no conceivable events could constitute proof against God for believers, so skeptics were right to wonder whether the concept of God meant anything at all.

Another landmark was his 1984 "The Presumption of Atheism," playing off the presumption of innocence in criminal law. Flew said the debate over God must begin by presuming atheism, putting the burden of proof on those arguing that God exists.

[Ego Tripping]

Awesome.

[snapshot]

"That, than which no greater can be conceived"

-Anslem's Ontological Arguement.

This seems like a good definition of God. This may just lead one on a search for evidence, though. This does seem like the perfect definition of God as well as that which cannot be denied. Though, if God can't be conceived there may be a lot of GODS.

[George W. Bush]

Is this kind of like the Cosmopolitan or some other magazine for retards that has on the cover, "Ten Top Scientists Prove The Existence of GOD" and when you open up the article it's like ten TA's from Community Colleges?

I once took a shit so painful I promised to start believing in God too if I lived, but I know I was full of shit. I guess if I hadn't been published since 1950, I'd re-live that painful shit in a letter to some whack-off mag.

If I was completely unknown my whole life for my atheist views and could only gain some recognition by late in my life renouncing a paper no one gave a shit about in the first place so some religious twats would make me famous for doing so, I might consider it. Especially if I toiled a worthless, boring, anonymous life teaching at tight-assed British schools.

Leading Atheists? BULL-FUCKING-SHIT. That's like saying J-Lo is one of the world's leading singers. Flew is about as important and influential in atheism as Keanu Reeves is to acting.

[Captain Cannabis]

it seems kind of contrived that someone would spend their whole life trying to disprove god then publicy renounce themself

[Woods]

It's so sad when senility sets in, but who cares? Who the fuck is this guy? This is no more meaningful then some stupid pop star changing religion every other week.

[kiWikkid]

So there is a God, but no after-life..??

That's some "shyster" of a God..!!

[koshiva]

Guess that guy didn't try mushies or lsd till he was 81.

:rollseyes:

[Hedons]

Lets keep this all in context.

I don't give a shit what any one person chooses to believe about God. On the subject of God, to believe or not believe is beyond proof. It's all comes down to opinion based upon hunches and gut feeling, which may have some basis or rationalization in hard facts.

Opinions and personal belief aside, is a fact that there exist certain people (usually within achedemia) who serve to lead the direction of how as a society we choose to educate.

Whether it is this man Antony Flew who focuses in philosophy, or someone like reductionist and neo-darwinist Richard Dawkins, these people have a very real influence on the course and direction of knowledge and ideas passed onto the world. These are the people who influence the direction of study and also have an impact on defining the "credible" areas where scientific research is even allowed to look.

-Hedons

based on the article through the internet infidels link, it doesn't sound like this

Antony Flew is very contemporary or influential at all

edit: a misreading on my part...here is what hits home for me

I think we need here a fundamental distinction between the God of Aristotle or Spinoza and the Gods of the Christian and the Islamic Revelations.

[Canuck Wisdom]

I hear alot of people who were supposed to be atheist believe in God on their death beds. I wonder why that is?

[Ego Tripping]

Because every single person on Earth wants to believe in an Afterlife. The Subconscious believes in Life after Death. On your Deathbed, you finally realize your mortality and reason for living.

[Woods]

Originally Posted by Ego Tripping

Because every single person on Earth wants to believe in an Afterlife. The Subconscious believes in Life after Death. On your Deathbed, you finally realize your mortality and reason for living.

What gives you the right to speak for 6,000,000,000 peole?

[Ego Tripping]

Originally Posted by Woods

What gives you the right to speak for 6,000,000,000 peole?

Your assumption that I am, I suppose.

Canuck pondered a question, I gave my theory. Oh, did I forget the "but thats my opinion?"

I figured you had enough cognitive thinking to realize that everything is opinion. But I figured wrong.

[Tokey]

ha ha ha

[ochoapeter]

Originally Posted by Ego Tripping

Your assumption that I am, I suppose.

Canuck pondered a question, I gave my theory. Oh, did I forget the "but thats my opinion?"

I figured you had enough cognitive thinking to realize that everything is opinion. But I figured wrong.

Owned

[Woods]

Everyone likes chocolate.

[ThePerfectDrug]

god isnt really god if it has to be searched for to be found

[ThePerfectDrug]

god is there, for you to take notice of, but in search you cant find it. when you know it cant be found, you get it.

nothing to grasp except for the moment