I am privileged to be one of the general editors of the upcoming Dictionary of Christianity and Science (Zondervan, April 2017). Paul Copan, Tremper Longman, Michael Strauss, and I–along with our excellent team at Zondervan–have endeavored to create a reference work that tackles the most important terms, concepts, people, and debates at the intersection of Christianity and science, from an evangelical perspective. Over the next few weeks I’ll be featuring sneak-preview excerpts from the Dictionary, available exclusively here at the CAA blog.
I remember reading Antony Flew’s article “Theology and Falsification” as an undergraduate in an introduction to philosophy class. At that time, back in the early 90’s, Flew was still known as one of the most prolific and influential atheists in the world. One thing I appreciated about Flew was that he was willing to engage in civil dialogue with Christian scholars–unlike many who wear the atheist mantle today. One of those scholars was Gary Habermas, a professor of philosophy at Liberty University. As far back as 1987, Flew and Habermas were publishing transcripts of their debates on the resurrection of Jesus. Flew and Habermas engaged in a number of debates and dialogues, and developed a lasting friendship. When it came time to find a writer for our entry on Flew for the Dictionary of Christianity and Science, it was only natural to ask Gary Habermas. Dr. Habermas’s insightful and appreciative article on Flew appears below.
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FLEW, ANTONY G. N. Arguably the skeptical philosopher who wrote more serious works defending atheism than any other scholar in history, Antony Flew (1923 – 2010) was born in London in 1923. Though he was the son of a conservative Methodist minister, Flew became an atheist during his midteen years.
Flew’s education included an MA from St John’s College, Oxford University, where he studied under the well-known philosopher Gilbert Ryle, and a DLit from the University of Keele. Flew frequently attended the famous Socratic Club founded in Oxford by C. S. Lewis, a scholar who was always willing to dialogue publicly. In fact, Flew was in attendance in February 1948 when Lewis and philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe participated in their celebrated debate.
Not long after completing his MA, Flew read before the Socratic Club what was to become one of his best-known and often-reprinted philosophical works, “Theology and Falsification” (1950). Among his some 30 volumes, other influential publications included Hume’s Philosophy of BeliefGod and Philosophy (1966), and The Presumption of Atheism (1976).
During his career, Flew taught at Christ Church (Oxford University), as well as the universities of Aberdeen, Keele, and Reading in the United Kingdom, plus York in Toronto, and elsewhere. Ever the philosopher, Flew’s interests migrated somewhat later in his career due to current events to political and moral philosophy, of which he seemed never to grow weary of addressing.
In 2004 Flew made the blockbuster announcement that he had come to believe in the existence of God, reporting that he made the decision after being inclined during his entire career to follow the evidence wherever it led. Among his reasons for doing so, he listed in order the force of Aristotle’s metaphysics (see Aristotle) and some recent tenets of Intelligent Design (Flew and Habermas 2004).
The news shocked much of the philosophical community, but especially skeptics, among whom Flew had understandably been a hero. He also surprised those who thought that he had long employed an a priori rejection of theism. Then in 2007 he coauthored the volume There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind (Flew and Varghese 2007), which included many details set within the story of his career.
Flew never embraced any revelatory views, at least publicly, and identified his view variously as that of theism or deism. Yet he fascinatingly reported that he was open to divine contact (see Flew 2007, 158, 213; Flew also affirmed to me that he was fully open to this possibility). Flew died in 2010.
REFERENCES AND RECOMMENDED READING
Flew, Antony, and Gary R. Habermas. 2004. “My Pilgrimage from Atheism
to Theism: A Discussion between Antony Flew and Gary Habermas.”
Philosophia Christi 6 (2): 197 – 211.
Flew, Antony, with Roy Abraham Varghese. 2007. There Is a God: How the
World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind. New York: Harper.
Taken from Dictionary of Christianity and Science by Paul Copan, Tremper Longman III, Christopher L. Reese, and Michael G. Strauss, General Editors. Copyright © 2017 by Paul Copan, Tremper Longman III, Christopher L. Reese, Michael G. Strauss. Used by permission of Zondervan. www.zondervan.com.
Pre-order the Dictionary of Christianity and Science and, for a limited time, receive $140 of bonus content.
More is worth saying. But I changed the word on to the word in after I posted a comment and that was enough to send the comment to moderation.
Unfortunate.
Our Non-Theist friends rarely disappoint:
No premises within the Christian metaphysic with respect to “Being Itself” / “GOD” actually presented and refuted.
____________
LHRMSCBrown
Interesting: it appears the best way to become the “most renowned atheist of the 20th century” is to stop being one. I would say that many atheists have a right to be considered far more renowned than Anthony Flew, even when limited to within the realm of philosophy: Bertrand Russell, A. J. Ayers, Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, W. V. O. Quine, Michel Foucault, George Santayana, Richard Rorty, John Dewey, Jürgen Habermas, José Ortega y Gasset, Paul Edwards, Jean Baudrillard, Simone de Beauvoir, Bernard Williams, etc. all come to mind before Anthony Flew. He’s not even the first name that comes to mind when asked about a 20th century philosopher who made the case for atheism. Rather, my recommendation would be J. L. Mackie, who wrote The Miracle of Theism. If you spread it out to every atheist who lived during the 20th century regardless of their field, Flew wouldn’t even be in the top 1000 most renowned, possibly not even in the top 10,000.
If he said that he was convinced by the arguments of “intelligent design” creationism, then that just goes to show that his conversion wasn’t based on rigorous evidence or arguments at all, because in the 30 years since it popped into existence as a way of getting creationism into the classroom while surviving a legal challenge based on Edwards v. Aguillard (1987), ID creationists haven’t managed to rack up any scientific gains and their arguments have been blasted out of the water. This fact was evident as early as 2004, when Flew announced his ‘conversion’, and it would be only a year later that ID creationism would be handed a stinging legal defeat in the Kitzmiller v. Dover case. Since ID creationism only exists in order to subvert the teaching of evolution in high school science classes, that was effectively its end as a viable force.
Not that the vague deism he affirmed after being hounded in his dotage by the despicable vulture Roy Abraham Varghese would have satisfied sincere Christians of past eras (just witness the way they treated poor Tom Paine), but with Christianity losing caste among philosophers I guess you have to just grab for what you can get. After all, just look at the PhilPapers survey that showed that 72.8% of the surveyed philosophers were atheists and only 14.6% were theists. That’s a worse rate for theism than you get when surveying scientists, who are commonly supposed to be some of the most atheistic people around.
Who is the most prominent Non-Theist today and what is his best justification for Non-Theism? What of Hume: http://edwardfeser.blogspot.com/2017/06/stroud-on-hume.html?m=1 …? What of Mackie http://www.reasonablefaith.org/professor-mackie-and-the-kalam-cosmological-argument …?
With respect to I.D., Christians often grant all knowledge of all physical systems to Non-Theists with the hope that Non-Theists will stop relying on their fallacious “Gap-In-Knowledge” defense of Non-Theism. See [1] http://christianapologeticsalliance.com/2017/04/23/what-about-god-of-the-gaps/ … and [2] https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2017/06/everywhere-know-origin-life/
Describing what physical systems do is both helpful and fun, but describing is not explaining. There’s far more work to do.
Quote:
“This is arguably the besetting mistake of all naturalist thinking, as it happens, in practically every sphere. In this context, the assumption at work is that if one could only reduce one’s picture of the original physical conditions of reality to the barest imaginable elements — say, the “quantum foam” and a handful of laws like the law of gravity, which all looks rather nothing-ish (relatively speaking) — then one will have succeeded in getting as near to nothing as makes no difference. In fact, one will be starting no nearer to nonbeing than if one were to begin with an infinitely realized multiverse: the difference from non-being remains infinite in either case. All quantum states are states within an existing quantum system, and all the laws governing that system merely describe its regularities and constraints. Any quantum fluctuation therein that produces, say, a universe is a new state within that system, but not a sudden emergence of reality from nonbeing. Cosmology simply cannot become ontology. The only intellectually consistent course for the metaphysical naturalist is to say that physical reality “just is” and then to leave off there, accepting that this “just is” remains a truth entirely in excess of all physical properties and causes: the single ineradicable “super-natural” fact within which all natural facts are forever contained, but about which we ought not to let ourselves think too much.”
End quote. (…by D.B. Hart…)
Is there a point to any of this, or are you just babbling and spamming me to no purpose?
Your lens is zoomed in way to far with respect to I.D. As in: You’re claiming you can, by describing physical systems, not only [1] deduce what the ontological history of design and non-design both look like (…laptops, neurons, whatever…) in a universe which on Non-Theism is necessarily forced into the conservation of non-design (…you’ve a metaphysical absurdity…) and, [2] also, by describing them, explain those same physical systems. If you can’t achieve [2] then you can’t even in principle begin to make headway in your metaphysical absurdity of [1]. See my dialogue with J. Downard at http://www.str.org/node/42513#.WUVv4oUpCaM ~~~
My “lens is zoomed in… with respect to ID” because those were the arguments that supposedly convinced Antony Flew to abandon atheism. Just because you have some sort of bee in your bonnet about this subject doesn’t oblige all of reality to adjust itself to suit you. No, I will not be seeing your dialogue with anybody because I’m not interested in what you have to say. Everything else has been rambling nonsense, and I doubt you switched it off for this other conversation.
See the added *disclaimer in the previous comment with respect to an unavoidable paradigm-wide conservation of non-design. Laptops, neurons, space stations, reason, whatever. The causal ecosystem vis-à-vis irreducible or cosmic intentionality is where all definitions in this continuum ultimately land. One cannot hide within what cannot exist – namely some sort of ontological cul-de-sac vis-à-vis what the ontological history of becoming looks like with respect to design and non-design. In a universe such ours if design actualizes anywhere then the game is over for Non-Theism.
There are no such things as ontological cul-de-sacs. Why? Because such a thing is a cheat, its lens zoomed in, ostrich-like, and sums to a metaphysical absurdity riding atop swells of equivocations.
It is there where we find our Non-Theist friends assuring us that, if we will only believe, Non-Designed Un-Design in fact runs about and Designs within an Ocean, a Universe, necessarily forced into its own unavoidable conservation of non-design.
See http://www.str.org/node/42160#.WUZ5W4UpCaM …. The discussion reflects the driving theme: The fundamental nature of “design” in any and all contexts.
Did I not make it clear last time that I had had enough of your word salad?
I didn’t expect you to be interested in causality with respect to the word design (…and the causal content which that word referents…) nor to defend the indefensible. I’m simply listing several of the reasons why that it is understandable given your paradigm’s available tools.
You’re talking nonsense. I don’t know why because I’m not a professional psychologist or psychiatrist or neurologist and therefore I’m not the person to seek help from for whatever problem it is that it causing this disordered speech. However, that doesn’t mean that I don’t recognize it as disordered speech and urge you to get in contact with someone with the right professional qualifications. Goodbye and I wish you the best of luck tackling your condition.
If the three topics of intentionality, causality, and design seem foreign to you, perhaps there’s a connection between your premises/conclusions about design and those other foreign-sounding topics. Or perhaps you believe that those three “layers” are unrelated with one another, or perhaps you believe the claim of “X designed Y” is void of causal content, though I can’t see any rational reason for such beliefs (…if they are what you believe etc…).
On the topic of intentionality, causality, and design, we’ve a reply as follows:
So then, from there, see: https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2017/06/how-would-jesus-blog-ebook-helpful-new-analysis/
Gilson, Tom. How Would Jesus Blog? Answering Online Adversaries Jesus’ Way
Also: A similar and somewhat common Non-Theist Tactic here is an Argumentum ad Frgenblitzen (…as per https://www.thinkingchristian.net/posts/2015/01/saying-no-to-fragenblitzen/ …). A sort of dance is embedded into a constant muddying of the waters with multiple sound bites introducing multiple topics in rapid succession in a comment or reply which are so diverse and numerous that it would take 20 pages to clarify. such is, perhaps, done lest the Non-Theist be pressed on any *one* sound bite. It’s a common “tactic” of a few of our Non-Theist friends when the weight of reason begins to make demands upon the logical progressions / outworking(s) of their definitions and terms.
Forget the doddering old man problem–Flew became a deist because he was persuaded by arguments in fields he was no expert in (biology). Why should Flew’s conversion be interesting?
Flew followed the evidence, and the evidence led him to believe that God exists. One needn’t be an expert in a field to understand the persuasiveness of the evidence from that field. I don’t have to graduate from medical school, for example, to understand the need to be vaccinated against various diseases. Flew was partly persuaded by Aristotle’s metaphysics, which *was* part of his field, along with evidence for fine-tuning of the universe and life. Many people have found fine-tuning to be persuasive evidence that the universe was designed.
Yes, you’re right. I’m simply saying that, as a non-biologist, Flew’s conclusion is no more newsworthy than mine (I’m also a non-biologist). Furthermore, if Flew rejected the scientific consensus for evolution (I get that sense from his embrace of the design argument, but I’m not sure), his conclusion is even less interesting.
Flew’s expertise was in philosophy. His path to deism was not. Therefore, unpersuasive. I see it as a bragging-rights kind of thing, but that’s it.
Yes, fine tuning is an argument. It is also out of his area of expertise.
Are you sure being an expert in a field and claiming that said line in said field counts as evidence for God is all it takes to be a valid Truth Metric which in fact comports with reality?
Huh?
You’ve appealed to being an expert and specifically used “Not An Expert” as a disqualification and I asked you if that is a mininum requirement to make truth claims such that those without degrees can STOP as they’re disqualified (…we are talking about the ontological history of becoming with respect to what the term “design” referents …see the rest of this thread’s comments…). You did a 180 on your initial metric when asked that question and then moved, widened, the goal posts. Okay, so, all experts on the planet have to agree? Or 51%? Or all Christian experts?
Or are you equating all claims of all paradigms such that you are asserting that ontological divergence in the trajectory of their claims is impossible to see/appreciate? Please explain.
Please try avoid contaminants of verificationism and please answer the question about non-experts [A] perceiving truth and [B] making truth claims. After all, “Not an expert” *was* *your* metric of disqualification for both [A] and [B] and that’s very peculiar and uncommon. I’m asking you to justify it. Recall that we are talking about the ontological history of becoming with respect to what the term “design” referents (…see the rest of this thread’s comments…). You are making claims on that from within a Non-Theistic framework. Interesting attempt. But that’s all further downstream once we’ve cleared up this perception-killing “Not an expert” metric of yours.
~~~
Are you claiming that only people with graduate education can perceive truth, such that said degree is a kind of “minimal requirement” before one can make rational claims upon reality, such that without that minimal requirement, well then it’s game over?
not my claim.
What if there are experts who rationally claim their own line counts as evidence God-ward? Case closed? Or is your Case-Closed mode of If/Then only a one-directional strawman?
I accept the scientific consensus. There is no religious consensus. The various religions of the world can’t even agree on how many gods exist or what to call them or how to placate them!
That’s just an attempt to make some progress on your question. I might well have misunderstood your point.
All experts on the planet have to agree? 51%? Please explain. Try not to hedge.
Also, you are in essence asserting that all claims of all paradigms including Naturalism, Idealism, Physicalism, and so on are all indistinguishable from one another with respect to their claims upon the fundamental nature of, say, the causal content of design and the reason is (…per your premise so far…) that those claims ultimately diverge and force distinctions. Both the Christian metaphysic and Philosophical Naturalism force distinctions and you count that category of distinction / disagreement as evidence of the incoherence of both. Why? Even worse: Given your Non-Theism, what scientific metric are you claiming in order to justify what you’ve claimed so far about what counts as the ontological history of becoming with respect to the term “design”?
Are you putting on airs? Or are you in such an ivory tower, engaging only with other super intellects like yourself, that you don’t realize the benefits of simple English and clear communication?
I’m simply asking you [1] to justify an earlier claim and [2] what you mean by design as per http://disq.us/p/1cg2grf etc….