Tim Blair

funny how people get faith when their time's nearly up eh? maybe he's just hedging his bets.

"If so, how come the cricket is currently rained out..."

Because the Defining Power of the Universe doesn't like sports with no cheerleaders.

More like a cosmic John Pilger, perhaps?

Gee, Tim, the blogging silly season has obviously arrived early. And anyway, who was it who said, when urged on his deathbed to renounce Satan, "This is no time to be making enemies".

Another Bertrand Russell

"He now believes in God more or less based on scientific evidence"

I wonder what that scientific evidence more or less is.

He seems to be invoking the "first cause" argument.

So who created this "intelligent being"?

Us Kiwis were praying for rain during the test series not the one dayers. So much for omnipotence, why is divine intervention so slow?

Quite so, amortiser.

Or to put it another way, if the complexity of nature requires explanation, doesn't the complexity of the intelligence that putatively created it?

I'm sure that Professor Flew hasn't overlooked this, but few philosophers have been at the peak of their powers in their 80s. Let's hope at least that his intellectual conversion hasn't softened his attitude to sociology

"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."

Found this interesting because Lewis was also an atheist at one time.

He is in good company. Cosmologists, who deal with the most complex mathematical problems (relativity and all that), are reported as reaching this conclusion earlier than the subject of our present blog. They find that the universe cannot be explained in the absence of an orderly creator. Makes you feel small ... or should.

Well, it may well be that the universe cannot be explained at our current level of knowledge. After all, not so many years ago one would have been accused of black magic - and burned at stake by the overzealous Christians - for suggesting things like computers, cell phones and flight to other planets were possible without a divine intervention.

I choose to remain a proud atheist...at this stage I think that a "scientific" evidence for the existence of God is an oxymoron.

Cheers,

JPB

"It may well be that the universe cannot be explained at our current level of knowledge" and it may well be that it cannot be explained at any future level of knowledge either. Nature may be too rich to be captured in any single set of laws, and science remains in Popper's words an "unended quest" . In no way does this commit us to the existence of a supernatural being, nor, I think, does it make it any more plausible.

"He is in good company. Cosmologists, who deal with the most complex mathematical problems (relativity and all that), are reported as reaching this conclusion earlier than the subject of our present blog."

I've read reports about this as well.

So Flew, the comfortable aged non-believer, is through the amiable atheist nest after fifty years.

But he is still, like most mid-twentienth-centurions, trying to define his preferred God.

'I'm thinking of a God very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam'.

Work it out at your leisure, screwy Frew.

When you decide, don't forget to tell the millions of the world whose God has been refuge, salvation, peace and comfort.

...not so many years ago one would have been accused of black magic - and burned at stake by the overzealous Christians...

Bullshit.

The last witch execution in England happened in 1684. Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two boys were burnt to death in 1999- that's 'not so many years ago.'

Not quite the C. S. Lewis conversion but you have to walk before you run and stand before you crawl.

Amortiser, the nature of the First Cause argument is that no one created the First Cause, or the "intelligent being". If they did, very obviously they would be the First Cause. We can keep going further and further back, but eventually we must accept that something was the intial cause which itself was uncaused.

As for Flew, this:

"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"

shows he is still a nutter. Who are those doing the depicting? What is he on about?

JPB: "I choose to remain a proud atheist...at this stage I think that a "scientific" evidence for the existence of God is an oxymoron."

Purely on a science level: Gravity of mass, infinity beyond the known universe, the vaccuum of space, pre-Big Bang, quantum physics, eternity, sub-atomic vibration, Earth's perfect physical conditions for life. I think science is a means of explaining God's work, not a replacement for it.

For me, the realisation of a Creator started by asking 'why', instead of being content with tv explanations of 'how'.

We have air in our lungs, and through this all else we receive. The question isn't how, but why?

As a fundamentalist atheist, I think it's terrible we can't cure this Flew guy of his obvious Alzeimers disease.

I know Anthony Flew slightly personally and know his work better. Believe me, he IS one of the sharpest tools in the box!

I think that the atheists are as belief stricken as the religousists. As far as science goes, there is no proof one way or the other. Again abscence of evidence is not evidence of abscense.

Isn't it the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle that basically says "Any system that is sufficient to explain complex phenomena, contains questions that the system itself cannot answer."?

The only scientific answer about the existence of God is we don't know one way or the other.

Cosmic Saddam Hussein? I doubt it. Don't know about you guys, but I feel like my behaviour can potentially have no limits, could God have pre-destined Boonie cracking the tinnie drinking record between Australia and England? I don't think so. I believe Boonie made a choice, and against the odds, cracked a fifty before he'd even stepped on the pitch at Lord's. God himself must have been in awe at this tremendous feat that libertarian free will allows us.

You see, God is obviously a libertarian by nature, let's see... allows us to fuck up like an idiot (John Kerry), learn from our own experiences (not Howard Dean), and take responsibility or not? (Christopher Skase)

Sounds libertarian to me. A God Of The Possible indeed. There, that should piss off any Calvinists, and any random religious control-freaks too.

"We can keep going further and further back, but eventually we must accept that something was the intial cause which itself was uncaused."

Since this is the problem we consistently run into, it should be apparent that we, most likely, seriously misunderstand the nature of causality--and probably time itself.

"Since this is the problem we consistently run into, it should be apparent that we, most likely, seriously misunderstand the nature of causality--and probably time itself."

Guh? It's a problem? How so? No matter how far back we go through history we still have seen cause upon cause, with each effect requiring an explanatory cause. Even if we go back to the tiniest speck of dust or a mass of fiery nebula which may be the source of all we see around us now, we are still left with the question - where did the speck of dust come from? Where did the fiery nebula come from? If we don't understand causality then we would have much difficulty with logical reasoning.

Since everything we look at has a cause there is an endless regression, an infinite one. There is no logical 'first cause'

This implies and endless progression as well.

Existence could be said to be circular, looped on itself so that the 'end' of this universe is the 'beginning'(first cause) of the next...except for the fact that something had to set the whole thing in motion....which sends us off again.

Therefore, there is something missing in our understanding. There is an aspect of this that we cannot see, something that resolves or enhances the endless causality problem.

Well, among atheists the choice is believing either that the Big Bang started out of nothing by means of a singularity or something/somebody was already there and started the whole thing. He is by no means religious.

Anyway: If there was a god, a weird game such as cricket would not exist!

No Alanc, Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle says nothing of the sort.
You're thinking of Gödel's theories, about the "completeness" of mathematical systems.

Cheers,
Damon, B.Sc in Physics, B.E.

Re: DamonK

Thank you muchly, you are, of course, correct. It has been way too many years since I studied any of that and I've never been great with names.

Of course I was thinking of Goedel, Escher, Bach by Hofstadtler (sp) which I read 30+ years ago.

But, despite the mistake, I think the point still holds. The only "logical, scientific" take is we just don't know. That's why we speak of religious beliefs rather than religious facts.

You notice something?

No flame war. Civil discourse about the nature of existence. Adult conduct. Intelligent positions and rebuttals.

After slogging through so much of the half-baked half-assery that passes off as rational thought, this is like cold water in the desert. Just wanted to say thanks for that.

"The only scientific answer about the existence of God is we don't know one way or the other."

Exactly. I find cocksure atheists as annoying and arrogant as cocksure religionists.

>...not so many years ago one would have been
>accused of black magic - and burned at stake by
>the overzealous Christians...

>>Bullshit.

>The last witch execution in England happened in
>1684. Australian missionary Graham Staines and
>his two boys were burnt to death in 1999-
>that's 'not so many years ago.'

If I'm not mistaken, Nigerian Christians still burn the occasional witch.

And 350 years ago is not that far back.

"We have air in our lungs, and through this all else we receive. The question isn't how, but why?"

Why not?

Nightfly,
You are stupid and wrong.
I hate you.

Alright, I keed, I keed. I was thinking the same thing you were.

I agree with Dave, I'm personally an agnostic. I lean atheist, but hey, I don't know, and I know that nobody else really does either.

"Since everything we look at has a cause there is an endless regression, an infinite one. There is no logical 'first cause'

This implies and endless progression as well."

Neither of these statement can fit with our current understanding of the universe (which of course could be wrong). There is no way to know what happened prior to the Big Bang, so the claim that there is an endless regression is pure speculation, with nothing to support it. One can't prove that the Big Bang requires a first cause, either, but you can't say "there is no logical first cause". And our current understanding is that the universe will continue to expand until it is completely homogenous (the "heat death" of the universe). Anything after that is pure speculation, again.

There's no question that there are a lot of gaps in our understanding of both nature and nature's God, but those gaps can just as easily be used to argue for or against the existence of God. Saying that "there is something missing in our understanding that explains the non-existence of the first cause" is meaningless.

Settle down everyone, read Flews comments on the ABC article here-

Sorry to Disappoint, but I'm Still an Atheist!
-

In short, I recognize that developments in physics coming on the last twenty or thirty years can reasonably be seen as in some degree confirmatory of a previously faith-based belief in god, even though they still provide no sufficient reason for unbelievers to change their minds. They certainly have not persuaded me.

He's not really lost it quite yet...

Well, it may well be that the universe cannot be explained at our current level of knowledge.

There's no question that there are a lot of gaps in our understanding of both nature and nature's God, but those gaps can just as easily be used to argue for or against the existence of God.

I think, rather than our level of knowledge, or our understanding, what we lack is the ability to understand God. We would not recognize God as God even if we were able to see him. Whether human beings ever reach that level remains to be seen (but not by you or me).

...and 350 years ago is not that far back...

LOL! I guess an atheist can make a leap of faith, Dave. Here's a man who was burnt for his religious beliefs, 'not that far back':

Graham Staines was a Christian Missionary from Australia who worked with lepers in Orissa. He was burnt alive by a gang of Bajrang Dal supporters on January 22, 1999.

Being a believer myself, I naturally disagree that Mr. Flew's athiesm (or non-conversion) is evidence that "he hasn't lost it."

If the subject is faith, he hasn't had "it" to lose; if it's intellect, it's no credit to him to contradict himself, as such:

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. ... "It could be a person in the sense of a being that has intelligence and a purpose, I suppose."
and then "I recognize that developments in physics coming on the last twenty or thirty years can reasonably be seen as in some degree confirmatory of a previously faith-based belief in god, even though they still provide no sufficient reason for unbelievers to change their minds. They certainly have not persuaded me."

I could have followed his position incorrectly, of course. It could be that he's persuaded that there is evidence, but just not enough to convince him, although he now admits the possibility. If so he is to be commended to note evidence contrary to his previous position, and modify his views as required.

In terms of working out who God is, what he is, wouldnt it be wise to not argue on the basis of human experience now, but to actually investigate the claims of those in History who have claimed to be a representative of God. (or even the claims of Jesus who claimed to be God in flesh).

There was this Saul guy who became Paul based on what he could no longer deny, that Jesus is God.

What is perhaps the scariest thing is that the God who made everything signalled that some academic knowledge of some first being was not sufficient, but that in reality, there was coming a time when all would be judged

Not to sound too scary at this early part of the morning, but there are some events in human history which various claims about God can be tested by.

"If I'm not mistaken, Nigerian Christians still burn the occasional witch."

You know, when you say things like this, you need to provide some sort of proof. And it's easy, unlike proving God exists: just provide us a link to a story on this. And no, fanatical Hindu gangs burning up Christian missionaries doesn't count as "Christians burning witches."

Interesting conversion - reminds me of Aldous Huxley.

Any way what is the difference between a theist and an atheist? Same coin - opposite sides. Both need to know exactly what God is, firstly know God's absence, secondly to know God's presence.

I don't know, I don't think about it because thinking about the incomprehensible seems a bit of a waste of time.

Louis, you're backed up by two Mental Giants there, both Jesus and Paul said that humans could not fully comprehend God. To stand in His presence, I think some shit like we saw in Kevin Smith's Dogma might go down - you know, our heads exploding...

The article to which Imam linked, “Sorry to Disappoint, but I'm Still an Atheist!” is from August 31, 2001, as visible at the article’s foot. To verify the age of that article, go to Flew’s author page at the same Website http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/antony_flew/index.shtml to which the article is linked & clearly dated as 2001, & also to the Website’s own homepage at http://www.infidels.org/new.shtml which mentions the current news of Flew’s change of mind.

Sorry, that was Tman, not Imam, who posted the link.

For discussion by somebody who has corresponded with Flew about his changing view of God, go to http://www.secweb.org/asset.asp?AssetID=369 “Antony Flew Considers God...Sort Of” by Richard Carrier. The article includes a “Update (December 2004)” in which Flew discusses what he considers the single relevant compelling evidence for God.

No date is given for the article’s first posting. The Website’s date info really sucks the big one.

Having followed ForNow's link to secweb.org, and onwards, I am impressed by the closed-mindedness and arrogance of both Carrier and Flew. It's ridiculous for a mere human being to assert that there is no God. Even 120 years of life is not long enough to turn over every rock in the universe to discover whether or not God, or at least His traces, might be lurking there. An agnostic might possibly be lazy but at least he or she has enough humility to admit to not knowing.

We're not required to "know exactly what God is" or to "fully comprehend" Him. We can't do either any more than a cyanobacterium can know exactly what we are or fully comprehend us. We can, however, learn who God is and, having discovered that, we can get to know Him. After 6 months of working on the former and then 25 years on the latter my own experience is that the effort is definitely not a waste of time. What began as duty has become love with side benefits of joy and peace. I wish you could all know God even better than I do.

Of course He has dragged me through the wringer backwards more than once, for my own good. But that's part of the excitement and the pay off is wonderful.

You can’t prove a negative Janice but that goes for invisible pink unicorns as well as ‘God’.

BTW which ‘God’ are we talking about Jewish, Christian, Islamic?
They are not the same.

What about myriad manifestations of ‘God’ in Hinduism or animist beliefs?

Prove they are wrong.

I assume that you believe in the Christian ‘God’, are you arrogant for thinking that the animist or ancient Greek beliefs are mythic?