janice matchett wrote:
>
> Antony Flew
>
>
I am sure you are familiar with the timeline?
Just for accuracy sake... Do you know when Flew made his comments to the
book?
Let me check the publication date of the book
*Hardcover * - December 2003 Hmmm.... Perhaps it was the softcover?
Much is made of Flew's conversion. Seems that now Flew claims ignorance
was the reason for his comments... Sounds familiar...?
Will we see Flew's views accurately represented?
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA115_1.html
Response:
1. Anthony Flew's conversion was not to theism, but to a weak deism,
a belief that a creator set the universe in motion but has not
participated in any way since (Carrier 2004).
2. Flew's one and only piece of relevant evidence for accepting a
deistic god was the apparent improbability of a naturalistic
origin for life (Carrier 2004). Flew, by his own admission, had
not kept up with the relevant science and was mistaught by Gerald
Schroeder, a physicist and Jewish theologian (e.g., Schroeder
2001). He later conceded, "*I now realize that I have made a fool
of myself by believing that there were no presentable theories of
the development of inanimate matter up to the first living
creature capable of reproduction*" (Carrier 2005). Thus Flew's
conversion is, by Flew's own admission, baseless.
http://www.secweb.org/asset.asp?AssetID=369#January2005-1
Flew remains a deist but calls his belief a "very modest defection
from my previous unbelief" (Carrier 2005).
3. The argument from authority is weak to begin with, and Flew has
never been a spokesperson for atheism, much less for the unrelated
subject of evolution. Nobody's unsupported beliefs, including
Flew's, constitute an argument for or against evolution (nor for
or against atheism). Only evidence and logical argument are
legitimate reasons to accept or reject any objective position.
Hopes this helps
In Christ
Received on Thu Oct 6 23:11:39 2005
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