Re: Viewpoint discrimination or careless reading.

At 01:38 PM 10/6/2005, George Murphy wrote:
>----- Original Message ----- From: "Michael Roberts"
><michael.andrea.r@ukonline.co.uk>
>To: "Pim van Meurs" <pimvanmeurs@yahoo.com>
>Cc: "asa" <asa@calvin.edu>
>Sent: Thursday, October 06, 2005 7:39 AM
>Subject: Re: Viewpoint discrimination or careless reading.
>
>>In the reference Pim gave there is a cracking reference to a quotation by
>>Plantinga
>>
>>"Why couldn't a scientist think as follows? God has created the world,
>>and of course has created everything in it directly or indirectly. After
>>a great deal of study, we can't see how he created some phenomenon P
>>(life, for example) indirectly; thus probably he has created it directly.
>>"return to text
>
>"Why couldn't a scientist ... ?" Well, a scientist could but _should_ a
>scientist?
>
>1st of course the qualification "after a great deal of study" is pretty
>vague. At what point is the turn from indirect to direct supposed to be
>legitimate? ... [snip]

### The Wonder of the World Full Review by Anthony Flew
http://www.thewonderoftheworld.com/Sections1-article227-page1.html

Dear Roy Varghese:

Thank you for sending me a proof copy of your massive new work The Wonder
of the World: A Journey from Modern Science to the Mind of God. You ask me
to send you, as soon as possible, a paragraph or two of pre-publication
comment. So here goes.

I think that I can best meet your request by relating some of your
contentions to point which I made in an Introduction for a possible new and
final edition of my God and Philosophy [May 2005]

".... Richard Dawkins has famously asserted that “Natural selection … the
blind automatic process which Darwin has discovered … we now know is the
explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life.”

Against that claim I pointed out, after quoting a significant sentence from
the fourteenth and final chapter of The Origin of Species, that one place
where, until a satisfactory naturalistic explanation has been developed,
there would appear to be room for an Argument to Design is at the first
emergence of living from non-living matter.

  And, unless that first living matter already possessed the capacity to
reproduce itself genetically, there will still be room for a second
argument to Design until a satisfactory explanation is found for its
acquisition of that capacity.

You have in your book deployed abundant evidence indicating that it is
likely to be a very long time before such naturalistic explanations are
developed, if indeed there ever could be. ....."

Antony Flew

Janice
Received on Thu Oct 6 22:32:02 2005