http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tm...&u=/ap/20041209/ap_on_re_us/believing_atheist By RICHARD N. OSTLING, AP Religion Writer NEW YORK - 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 Books. 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.
Welcome to the party: "The best data we have concerning the creation of the universe are exactly what I would have predicted had I nothing to go on by the five books of Moses, the Pslams and the Bible as a whiole" -- Nobel-winning physicist, Arno Penzias "The exquisite order displayed by our scientific understanding of the physical world calls for the divine." -- MIT physicist Vera Kistiakowski "Today, the concrete data point strongly in the direction of the God hypothesis. Those who wish to oppose it have no testable theory to marshal, only speculations about unseen universes spun from fertile imaginations...Ironically, the picture of the universe given to us by the most advanced science is closer in spirit to the vision presented in the Book of Genesis than anything offered by science since Copernicus." -- Patrick Glynn, PhD, Harvard "My conclusion can be summed up in a single word: design. I say that based on science. I believe that irreducibly complex systems are strong evidence of a purposeful, intentional design by an intelligent agent." -- Biochemist Michael Bebe, Lehigh University The big one was Professor Dean Kenyan (I believe that's how you spell his last name). This guy wrote the seminal paper on evolution...he was called the modern father of darwinism. He was truly, the man, in those circles. He wrote a book called Biochemical Predestination. At a conference in about 1992 in Dallas, he got up to the podium and denounced all of his conclusions, saying science no longer pointed in that direction for the creation of life. And of course, there's my sig! http://www.discovery.org/csc/
He doesn't believe in the christian god etc. He reasons that there is some sort of creator. His mind could change once again, but it doesn't really matter. There are probably just as many atheist physicists as there are deists and believers. The Big Bang is one type of conceptual construct, much like seeing a life with birth and death. It's no more absolutely true than any other construct. Any concept of god or anything else does not make it, is not really going to cut it, no matter how much you try. Personally, I will never believe that something can come from nothing, a creation ex-nihilo. There is always a physical link between the created and the creator. There is no beginning and no end, no birth, no death. If the universe was created, it is because there was a potentiality already present. The coming into being of the universe is merely the realization of that potential. But we are only able to directly experience a very small part of everything, and it's just really hard to imagine things that we have no way to directly experience. So like the Buddha said, "don't bother." But I probably will contintue grasping...
Actually, NASA proved the Big Bang Theory about 10 years ago. Unbelieveably, it supported Creationism. Fascinating article, BTW.
I'm not really saying the Big Bang isn't true. I'm saying the ultimate truth of what we call the big bang is beyond our perspectives and knowledge. So let's say the big bang happened, the question is why. Who can truly say what came before the big bang. Can you "prove" that no universes existed before this one, or that there are not an infinite number of big bangs, perhaps none of them not having the same outcome etc.? I can and can not. Nobody really can. And I'm not at all qualified to discuss physics... BTW, to make matter worse, the subject does not exist outside the observed object. They depend on each other to co-exist. What we see as the big bang is ourselves.
Well if you believe the laws of physics, then, yes, they were able to prove it. It was based on the Hubble telescope's findings, along with the outward growth of the universe that still exists today because of the Big Bang. I wish I knew where to find the article. The Chronicle did a front page article on it if you know how to archive. In fact, I'm going to try.
the argument that life or the cosmos are so complex that it must have had an intelligent designer is extremely weak and unconvincing to me since we don't know the answers to some cosmological questions, why do some people inject a creator ? it just doesn't make sense to me to make that jump with zero evidence if we accept a first cause explaination for the creation of the universe, why does that first cause have to be an intelligent designer? why not multiple designers? why can't the first cause be something else entirely? too many unanswered questions for me to accept that leap in logic from 'oh this is so complex, I dont understand how it was created' to 'then it must be God that designed it' in order for you to argue with me that the universe was designed, you must first argue what the purpose of the universe is, b/c without a purpose, there can be no design(er)
My wife and I had a Big Bang last night after the incredible T-Mac explosion. Afterwards, I reflected that the Universe had a reason to exist simply for moments such as these... the last minute of the Rockets game, and making love to your sweetie. There may not be a god... beats me, but life occasionally has meaning, purpose, and contains boundless pleasure. We just have to find it where we can, appreciate the moments that we do, and hope for more in the future. Personally, I think the guy read some good science fiction and had an epiphany. That, and he likes the stage. He's gotten attention again at age 81. Not too shabby. Keep D&D Civil!!
there is a great book on it called The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene string theory isn't easily explained in an article. there are lots of pieces that are put together to get to how string theory works. that book is similar to a brief history of time with how it is written for a layman, but the concepts are still completely mind boggling.
