AP: Famous Atheist (Antony Flew) Now Believes in God

[truthpusher]

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=315976

Famous Atheist Now Believes in God

One of World's Leading Atheists Now Believes in God, More or Less, Based on Scientific Evidence

NEW YORK Dec 9, 2004 — 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."


more:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=315976

[PsychoDad]

1. Shows his misconception...

of the Idea of God in Islam.

[truthpusher]

4. How?

[papau]

45. At DU there are many that fear GOD and proclaim they are an Atheist

(Some even come to that conclusion the way believers come to believe - it feels "right" for them.

But like the Christian or Islamic fundi's that must convert you, the DU Atheist must explain why you are stupid and he is smart.

:-)

best let them enjoy telling us why this fellow really does not come to this conclusion based on real thought and feeling - he must be no longer smart - or he is making "Pascal's wager" - that you lose only if there is a God and you do not believe - but if there is no God, you lose nothing by believing in God.

[WillParkinson]

72. Really now?

I don't believe that I've ever said that someone was stupid for their belief. I just don't agree with it.

Oh, but of course, just like every christian every atheist must be exactly the same.

[VegasWolf]

88. Exactly, I've never called them stupid. Their belief is just

incomprehensible to me, like believing in little green men
is incomprehensible.

[Cheswick2.0]

108. nothing insulting there

Right?

In actuality atheists are just tragically left brained, lacking the ability to percieve or understand anything that isn't right in front of you all printed out in black and white.

[VegasWolf]

117. I've just revised my opinion re stupidity. n/t

[WillParkinson]

138. Gee, thanks Ches...

Nice to know how you think of me.

[renaissanceguy]

207. And God is right in front of us in black and white?

Unless if you have special vision, I just don't see it.

[Just Me]

87. Being a deist allows you to respect a variety of belief systems,...

,...while being more aware of humanity's role in creating the world we live in,...rather than worrying about ever trying to ascertain how or why or what role God is playing (because none of us could possibly do that anyway), if any.

[JohnOneillsMemory]

99. Ah, yes. 'Pre-emptive faith.' Just in case...

The badge of intellectual courage is used as a chit to claim comparative superiority.

But that was the original purpose of moralizing, anyway.
To shame people (mostly men) into being 'better' animals.

As civilisation has grown and evolved, the nature of that shaming system called religion hasn't changed enough to match its original purpose, peace in 'the family.'

Consequently, it has become more of a DIVISIVE social control where once it was a more UNIFYING social control.

[Arianrhod]

124. Interesting that he comes by this new-found belief

at age 81, quite suddenly, "in the past few months".

At least Sagan had the courage of his convictions right through his death.

[PsychoDad]

134. All of life is a spiritual jorney.

And there are a lot of twists and turns along the way ;)

[girl gone mad]

140. way to generalize. n/t

[Ediacara]

171. Wow, talk about calling people stupid...

Pot, meet kettle..

[PsychoDad]

132. concept of God in Islam

here's a link to a pretty good summery of what Islam teaches about the concept of God.

http://www.islamic.org.uk/cncptgod.html

[truthpusher]

86. Flew info link

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/antony_flew/flew-bio.html

[BadGimp]

2. Senile dimentia?

off his meds?

on his meds?

whatever..

[Tweed]

6. How kind of you to knock on all the non atheists here

What an unclassy post.

[seriousstan]

10. Many people don't understand how poorly we have been served

by the appearance of a hatred and disdain of religion and those that believe in a religion.

[JohnOneillsMemory]

28. Woody Guthrie's take on religion from his son Arlo the other night-

I worked with Arlo Guthrie and his son at a concert two nights ago. Arlo usually tells stories about his famous anti-fascist folk singer father, Woody Guthrie.

Woody had a daughter hospitalized with fatal injuries from a fire before Arlo was born.

The admitting nurse asked what religion to put in the paperwork for the patient. Mom said put 'all'. The nurse said "I can't do that." So Mom said "then put none" and ran to see her dying daughter.

Later, Woody came to the hospital and the nurse asked him for a religion to put on the paperwork and Woody ran away to see his injured daughter and also yelled back "all or none!"

The audience was mostly Jewish as this was a co-bill with the Klezmatics and they applauded this story heartily.

I think this illustrates that so-called 'atheism' might be the most inclusive spirituality espoused rather than the opposite which is what the special interest sects try to claim.

[truthpusher]

34. Great story but don't you mean Agnosticism?

[seriousstan]

37. I think the example you gave would lean toward agnostic.

Whereas atheism is closer to a belief that their is no God, agnostics simply haven't formed a solid opinion on the subject with the knowledge they currently have. They don't call people crazy and off their meds for believing in religion. That was the point I was trying to make.

The other point was, this man was not espousing belief in ANY particular organized religion but rather that he believed in a higher power/order and had formed some opinions on how it interacted with his world.

[JohnOneillsMemory]

65. I think this says that 'agnostic' and 'atheist' are false distinctions.

AND I point out that Agnostics DO have a firm opinion-
which is that it isn't possible to determine yay or nay on 'God's' existence.

As in, "sorry, we don't have the bandwith or tools to know with certainty so don't hang your hat (or your neighbor) on that idea."

Atheists ALSO do have a firm opinion in the 'no column' and for much the same reason.

Damn near the same thing, pun intended.

This also illustrates that even though it is useful to allow more choices than merely two on a question to allow for a true answer, when you are debating existence it IS a binary choice. Yes or No.

This sounds like "all or none" to me.

But only 'liberal elitists' who don't know 'hard work'(unlike our president) would have time to think about THIS stuff since MORAL PEOPLE only need to read the instruction manual and then do what they are told by authorities in uniform, even if it means killing strangers.

Obedience is freedom and freedom is now...mandatory.
Gee,the New Freedom Initiative must be God's work!

Hey, this is easy!
Can I have my reward now?
No?
How about a lawyer?
NO?!?!

(Hmmm. Maybe I DO need God after all. OK, he may exist now.)

on edit: By coincidence, I just heard Randi Rhodes on Air America Radio say "people who moralize from way up on their high horse are just liable to get a head injury..." Ha! I love her 'blue-collaristic' common sense language.

[54anickel]

76. Ellis Paul put music to the lyrics of God's Promise written by Woody

It's an absolutely beautiful piece. It was released on the Speed of Trees CD.

[demigoddess]

277. thats what I like to hear.

that is a great definition of atheist. Also I like that they say they do good because it is the right thing to do. Good for society. Not because of fear of an invisible being.

[Reverend Smoothfield]

40. religious ideas are still ideas

they're factual propositions about the real world. if people find those ideas ridiculous or pernicious, why should they not be free to disdain and even hate those ideas? if someone tells me women aren't smart enough to drive, or that martians shot kennedy, or that abolishing gun laws would reduce gun violence, i'm going to disdain that person and probably ridicule them as well. why should i bite my tongue when someone tells me they're going to be brought back after they die, reunited with all their dead relatives, and then live in bliss for all eternity? it's so obviously self-serving and unlikely i really believe i'm doing them a favor by mocking them.

[truthpusher]

46. I knew it was those damned Martians all along!!!

[VegasWolf]

51. Sir, I praise you for your mockery and believe that you may be

on the one, true path to salvation.

[seriousstan]

52. "God was not actively involved in people's lives"

That was as far as he went. He didn't say he believed in any of the exaggerated examples you gave. Yet you had to lump him in with those examples. THAT is what my original post was pointing to....the disservice the hatred of religion we have received in our political endeavors.

By all means, mock any and all people who hold even a tenuous belief in a higher power. It helped SOOOO much about a month ago.

[Reverend Smoothfield]

66. let me ask you this

would you have posted your original post if it were, say, someone's economic ideas being ridiculed rather than their religious beliefs? i don't think you would have done. there's a widely held view--you seem to share it, i could be wrong--that religious ideas should be examined with less rigor and more gentleness than other ideas. and i just don't get it. i'm not going to burst into a church and start mocking people for their beliefs. people are free to live their lives how they want and take their comfort where they can find it. i--almost--respect that. but this is an online discussion forum. this entire medium consists of ideas and counterideas.

as for your second point, it was PRECISELY my disdain for religion that made me rent a van, drive to ohio, and bus democrats to the polls about a month ago. if a few more of my atheist buddies had peeled themselves of the couch we might have won. i don't want to live in a theocracy and i'm not going to pretend i do to win an election.

[seriousstan]

70. Economics and religion are vastly different.

People love their religions and their Gods. I would no sooner demean their God than demean their wife. She may be fat and ugly but you don't bring it up.

Again, I agree with your second statement,"I don't want to live in a theocracy." However, I will leave a hornets nest alone when there are larger goals to accomplish. Taking every opportunity to belittle someones religion during an election cycle is a poor way to influence and an excellent way to mobilize. The larger goal was to win the election. Now we have 4 more years of Bush and many more decades of his Supreme Court appointments. It seems like an uneven trade to me.

I also understand that many things are said on this forum that people would never say out in public, but I have also seen people who are, in my opinion, rather short-sighted be influenced by what is said here and continue discussions in public. I do not think discourse in the form of ridicule, comparing to Hitler, identifying as fascist and nicknaming people sheeple served us well in the last election. While it definitely has a cathartic effect wen used in this forum, it is merely a wedge when said in public.

I didn't mean to get off on a rant, but this last race was so close that I sincerely believe that the little things would have changed the outcome. Most people, as you pointed out, will not peel themselves off the couch unless they think they have a personal "dog in the fight". I believe insults are very personal.

[Zhade]

105. "How about a little fire, Scarecrow?"

Again, I agree with your second statement,"I don't want to live in a theocracy." However, I will leave a hornets nest alone when there are larger goals to accomplish. Taking every opportunity to belittle someones religion during an election cycle is a poor way to influence and an excellent way to mobilize. The larger goal was to win the election. Now we have 4 more years of Bush and many more decades of his Supreme Court appointments. It seems like an uneven trade to me.

The implicit strawman argument in your post is that "Christian-bashing" or something similar caused the election loss. This is clearly a ludicrous notion, and I would ask that you either deny and clarify these statements, or offer up proof to back the assertion you appear to be intimating.

[Stuckinthebush]

166. I guess I would demean the wife

If she was pushing herself on me in sexual advances. I wouldn't say, "Damn, you are ugly!", I would say, "You are not my type."

When the religious right (or left for that matter) begins to push its silliness on me and my daughters, then that is when my opinion must be given. It just needs to be given in the most unoffensive manner necessary.

Now going back to the ugly wife illustration...if the ugly wife ignores my protests and jumps on me in an attempt at rape, then I might have to pull out the ugly comment and throw a few punches.

I don't want to be raped by another person's beliefs.

[Reverend Smoothfield]

178. and what if you're pretty sure the wife doesn't exist?

if the guy just stands there telling you how much he loves his wife and keeps gesturing at a pair of empty houseshoes?

and what if he then tells you that his "wife" has privately told him how you--you!--should be living your life? can you ridicule him then?

what about if he then runs for president and proudly tells the nation that he won't make a move without running it past his "wife" first? and he'll only appoint supreme court justices who also claim to be able to see the "wife" and agree that what she says goes?

[Stuckinthebush]

197. We would call that crazy

and lock him up.

[Stunster]

219. Religion and experience

The Sadducees at the time of Jesus denied that there was any resurrection.

We have a tendency to think that ancient people were terribly superstitious and in constant denial about reality. But as the Anglican Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, puts it in one of his recent books, ancient people knew that dead people stayed dead. This is why the first Christians were mocked or faced skepticism.

Certainly Plato and some other Greek philosophers had no difficulty in believing in the immortality of the soul. But they were not superstitious, naive, or lacking in common sense or intelligence. But what was truly scandalous about early Christianity was that it preached bodily resurrection.

In Wright's book, THE RESURRECTION OF THE SON OF GOD, he examines early Christianity's claims about the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the point of view of what an open-minded historian would have to make of the evidence. It's 800 pages long, and immensely erudite.

The conclusion Wright comes to is that there is no rational way for a historian, using the standard methods and canons of historical inquiry, to arrive at any other position than that a) Jesus's body was not in the tomb where it was laid, and b) his disciples had visionary experiences of him being alive.

Now, of course, why the body was not there, and why the disciples had these visionary experiences is hard to know for sure.

But let me share with you a true, recent story. I have a friend, an older lady called Alice, who was married to Bob. Alice recently retired from teaching physiology and anatomy to nursing students at LA City College. Bob was nearly 20 years older than Alice, and died in May 2003. I knew them pretty well. They have two daughters. The older one, Alison, got engaged not long after her father died. The wedding took place in October 2004. Alice and the other daughter spent some time with the bride just prior to the wedding. But they were painfully aware that Bob would not be there to walk Alison up the aisle. Thinking that Alison might want a few moments alone, they left her in the bridal room at the back of the church for a minute or so, just prior to walking up on either side of her, up the aisle.

During the wedding, Alice, the other sister, and other people noticed that Alison seemed to be unusually radiant with joy, even for a bride. She seemed incandescent with happiness, so much so that at the end, they remarked upon it to her and asked her about it. Alison revealed that her dad had appeared to her, in risen glory, to give her his blessing.

Now one can try to suggest she was hallucinating, and was motivated by a powerful desire that her dad should be there on her wedding day. Perhaps, though the experience was certainly very unusual---many brides get married without their deceased fathers appearing to them. But what I'm suggesting is more basic, and it's this. Religious believers are not simply making up their beliefs out of thin air, or simply because they wish that certain things be the case. Behind religious belief is a significant and well attested phenomenon of mystical experience, and it's this body of mystical experience which initially gave rise to the religious worldview---not the other way round.

People became religious because some of them experienced things which, when conceptualized, produced religion. People continue to be religious because it answers to their current experience---the sense of being in the divine presence, the sense of being spiritually healed or cleansed, the sense of there being a transcendent source of moral value and duty, the sense that the bonds of human love are somehow stronger than death, etc. These are not just thoughts or beliefs that people make up in their heads. They are initially things that people feel in the depths of their souls.

I have met and known a large number of extremely intelligent, very sane individuals who have had extraordinary religious experiences. The motive I had for finding out about them is that twice in my life, I've had extraordinary religious experiences. I am also very well educated, with degrees in philosophy, social sciences (a Master's at Oxford), and law, and have spent most of my adult life in academia, just in case you think that only irrational or poorly educated people have extraordinary religious experiences.

[daleo]

247. Interesting post

I suppose most people agree that mystical experiences are, in some sense, real. The question then, what do we mean by real? Is it an inner mental event triggered entirely within an individual mind, or is there more to it? Personally, I think it is usually the former, but it can be the latter. But that's just me.

[Merlin]

253. Jesus was just a convenient man to make a legend of.

He did not personally teach bodily resurrection. Not even Paul (who wrote in AD 49-60) believed it. It was concocted later by the anonymous gospel writers (who wrote in AD 70-100) who were trying to "prove" that Jesus--called, after his death, the "Christ" by his original legend manager, Paul--was fulfilling the words of OT "prophets" (then thought of as social critics, like Jesus, not prognosticators). The bodily resurrection was something conjured by, I believe, Daniel, in rantings worthy of someone on an acid trip.

Jesus' own bodily resurrection was needed to explain away why his prediction "this generation shall not pass away until all these things come to pass" seemed to be false. If he did not actually die, the theory was, then the "generation" had not yet passed away.

You point to many kinds of "spiritual" personal experiences that you call "religious" experiences. I would question that interpretation, in the sense that I believe they are more emotional and spiritual experiences than ones originating from divine intervention.

I do think we humans are highly "spiritual" beings. Spirituality actually is but one's awareness of being on the same wavelength as other beings--even dead beings or imagined beings--and "communicating" with our sense of them and their thinking or their remembered presence.

In that sense, it is easy to understand how the apostles may have believed Jesus was "still alive" in the same way that Martin Luther King--who I once had coffee with--is still alive in me and as much a part of me as ever.

But, as we know, even the apostles--that is the ones who actually knew Jesus--not Paul, who didn't--did not believe in bodily resurrection.

All in all, yours was a great post. Thank you.

[truthpusher]

279. I agree, I think that the resurrection really has no practical purpose..

...in furthering what Jesus was teaching. What does bodily resurrection have to do with anything other than providing a Wow element to his story.

[truthpusher]

281. Great Story...

...I Think that the Resurrection of Christ was probably more of an appearance like you mention happening to your Friend with her father, rather than a bodily resurrection.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

189. "All the non atheists" haven't been atheists their entire lives. Nice try.

[Tweed]

221. Excuse me?

[Cronus Protagonist]

133. On a related note, God now recognises the existence of Her new convert

No wait, she can't recognise him without his moustache.

[Carl Brennan]

222. Oh, everybody keeps stealing my line.

:toast:

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

3. Concepts

can change over time. What religions fight over are merely concepts of God, which amazes many who think, for some reason, that their belief system is the only right one.

Personally, I see a merging of science and spirituality, as concepts of God change.

[LoZoccolo]

5. Ha ha hey now wait a minute!

How many people here are going to email this guy and use the little :grr: smiley and tell him he's brain-dead and that they don't give a fuck what he thinks and that he believes in fairy tales?

I would imagine about none.

[Cronus Protagonist]

14. How many militant atheists are there?

I would guess a large number of them would do, or would like to do, just that.




http://brainbuttons.com/home.asp?stashid=13
Buttons for brainy people - educate your local freepers today!

[Trajan]

7. The 'origin of life' ....

is no more complex than the organization of a star, which may also possess billions of separate entities apparently acting in unison ...

Furthermore: there is no evidence that anything was 'created', ever .... there is no evidence that the 'stuff' of the universe had ever NOT existed .... hence: no act of creation is deemed necessary ....

Life is 'organized matter' ... stars are 'organized matter' ... galaxies are 'organized matter' ....

Snowflakes are 'organized matter' .... yet each is produced by material CONDITIONS .... and by the trillions every day .....

Even smart men can be wrong ....

[truthpusher]

9. I am not sure how I feel about the God idea...

...but I do think that there may be something 'bigger' than everything.

[Trajan]

20. The essence of the 'ontological argument' ....

imagine the thing of which no thing is 'bigger' ...

Anselm's Ontological Argument:

1) By definition, God is a being than which none greater can be imagined.

2) A being that necessarily exists in reality is greater than a being that does not necessarily exist.

3) Thus, by definition, if God exists as an idea in the mind but does not necessarily exist in reality, then we can imagine something that is greater than God.

4) But we cannot imagine something that is greater than God.

5) Thus, if God exists in the mind as an idea, then God necessarily exists in reality.

6) God exists in the mind as an idea.

7) Therefore, God necessarily exists in reality.

Anselm's OA as long since been discredited ....

Back to your statement: ...

WHAT can be bigger than 'everything' ? .. the definition of 'everything' doesnt allow for something outside of 'everything' to exist .....

[ilovenicepeople]

212. I always concidered myself an aethiest,but it seems like there is a satan

ruling over a huge portion of the population.So if there is a satan there must also be a good god out there somewhere?

[truthpusher]

283. I think mean people are Satan...

...it does not take a heightened spirituality to do evil things. Satan/Evil is not the opposite of Good/God. It is something completely different, it comes from a different place. Satan is only a scapegoat for the evil that people do. God on the other hand is not a scapegoat for good. God has something more to do with bridging the infinite...I think?

[papau]

11. no evidence that the 'stuff' of the universe had ever NOT existed??

Big Bang, QM, ????

I like the line - but it is not based on current science. Einsteins rubber band universe goes to bang and back - but that is not current thought.

[Trajan]

26. The Big Bang Event is a re-organizational event ....

IE: the total quantity of the universe ensconced within an infintesimal singularity ....

Though the singularity is extremely miniscule: it is not 'zero' ....

It IS 'everything' .... it is not 'nothing' ...

There is no evidence that the matter/energy enclosed within the singularity did not predate the BBE ... it is there at the event time zero, but did it not exist BEFORE 'time zero' ? ..

There is no evidence either way ... we cannot know what happened prior to the BBE ....

There is no evidence there WAS matter/energy ...


There is no evidence there WAS NOT matter/energy ...

Since matter/energy currently exists, and existed during the time zero point: I see no reason to presume it did NOT exist at any other point ....

[papau]

39. I agree - and if the pulsating Universe was "best science" you'd be

correct -

but it isn't, and you are not. Afraid time "began" - and energy and matter "began"

sorry!

But these "best current science" ideas change often - and in the end you may be in agreement with "best science" - and just ahead of your time today!

peace

:-)

[truthpusher]

48. I think this is Antony Flew's 'best current science'.

[Trajan]

179. This answer is much like ....

demanding the clock doesnt exist, until it is running ....

OBVIOUSLY: a mechanism existed that resulted in the emergence of a material reality, a universe .... is that mechanism infinite in nature ? .. or did the mechanism emerge from nothingness ? ...

I think the jury is still out as to whether your so called 'pulsating' universe (closed system, oscilllating universe, etc.) is or is not a reasonable hypothesis ...

Given this difference: lets view 'the facts'

1) We presently exist in a material universe which is sensible to our human sense systems. It is self evident that this material universe exists: I agree it exists, and you posit a god made it exist ... obviously we both agree it exists ...

2) We presently admit that the current state of the material universe is NOT static, and that is has evolved over 'time' from one state to another, and in fact has NEVER been static, but ever changing, and dynamically evolving ...

3) We seem to agree that, given the current state of the evidence (red shift, backround cosmological radiation 'echo', etc) we believe that the entire materiality of our universe emerged from a singular point in space/time: with all of the material/energy of the known universe packed into an infinitesmally small point, under nearly infinite pressure, at one location somewhere in the fabric of 'space' ... the singularity

THIS is where we diverge:

YOU> state that an Intelligent Being standing OUTSIDE of this universal system, slinking around the outside of the existent physical and objective singularity, had actually, through some communication of an intelligent design, within a 'non-existent' medium which 'did not exist' outside of that singularity, actually 'caused' the singularity to emerge from nothingness ...

I> state that nature itself IS the mechanism which IS the singularity ... and that nature and the singularity ... has no cause ... That its existence, either in the infinitely compressed form, or in the expansive, condensing form, is infinite ...

NATURE .. is the alpha and the omega ....

The singularity was there: we agree on that: ... HOW it 'got there', or IF it ever 'got there' is the issue ... it WAS there, and there is no evidence that it was NOT there in any state or manner, IE that it emerged from the decision of an almighty god ....

Either way: we cannot show a god placing a ball of space/time/matter/energy into a spot in the cosmos and pressing the start button, nor can I show the state of the singularity up to the emergence of the expansion and the 'beginning' of space time ....

I suspect that a time 'prior to' the big bang did exist, even as it is unfathomable and illogical now ....

[Stunster]

227. It's not merely the existence of the universe

that is the salient point requiring explanation.

It's that the universe should have the extraordinarily fine-tuned physics it has.

Were any number of physical constants ever so slightly different in value (see Martin Rees, JUST SIX NUMBERS), no life or even stars would exist in this universe.

Ok, the question is, what are the chances of this physics occurring by random chance? All cosmologists, astro-physicists and other scientists who have looked at this question have the same answer---the chances of this degree of fine-tuning occurring by random chance are practically nil.

So, there are now three options on the table.

1) The Multiverse Hypothesis. The trouble with this is that it posits an infinity of unobservable entities (other universes) in order not to have to posit an intelligent creator of this universe. This is an egregious violation of Ockham's Razor, and is an abandonment of the scientific methodological principle that entities posited by science must be observable in principle.

2) A Platonic conception of the laws of physics, or some underlying Ultimate Law (or Set of Laws), as timelessly and eternally existing in abstract space. The trouble with this is that we have no experience of abstract entities (like equations) having causal efficacy. We do have experience of persons thinking abstract thoughts engaging in causal activity, however. But that suggests that the ontologically ultimate explanatory reality is better conceived on an analogy with human personhood. This of course is what theism does. Furthermore, as Stephen Hawking asks in A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME, how come the ultimate equations or laws go to the trouble of having themselves instantiated in a material universe? And how could something that exists only in abstract, timeless space do anything with causal effects in real spacetime? I mean, we know what it's like for a mind to be causally active---but a freestanding abstract entity like a number or an equation? And if you're going to posit a Platonic realm, that is immaterial, why not go the whole hog and accept that the immaterial might be spiritual and personal and causally active.

So this suggests the third option:

3) Theism. It has the advantage over Platonism and the Multiverse in being analogous to something we are very familiar with---namely, rational minds, endowed with moral value and causal powers. It is an explanation that has wide scope: potentially it can explain not only the physical fine-tuning that makes the universe fit for life, but also the emergence of consciousness, rationality, free will, moral obligation, beauty, and profound emotional experiences involving love, joy, tenderness, hope, etc, not to mention religious experiences themselves. In other words, that the world should contain all these phenomena, and have incredibly awesome physics, would not be very surprising if theism is true, but is if the hardcore materialism is true.

[truthpusher]

286. Theism definitely puts a nice bow on it all, doesn't it!

On the other side of things; what is the importance (to everything) that we humans understand all of this stuff? All of the rules existed before we did right? Now if these rules for the physical existed before we did, did the rules for the emotional and spiritual universe exist as well? Is love for example, a universal rule that would be the same on other planets inhabiting intelligent life (if there are such a thing)? or is love strictly an earth human rule only? Did the love rule evolve from us? Is it ours exclusive? or has it always been?

[muriel_volestrangler]

294. But if your argument for theism is that it is analogous to ourselves

then surely you have to argue that, like ourselves, the god or gods concerned must themselves have a cause. Ultimately, you have to end up with something with no cause - therefore unlike any mind we know. This may as well be those Platonic laws, rather than a god with some of our own attributes.

[Stunster]

315. Not really

In whatever one posits as an overarching explanatory theory of reality, something or other will have to be explanatorily ultimate (because an infinite regress of explanations is non-explanatory).

What are the candidates?

There are three:

1) Matter/energy stuff

2) Mind

3) Abstract Platonic Laws

There is no particular reason why the correct candidate can't be analogous to our own nature as possessors of a rational mind.

We are also made of matter, and we also have mathematical and other abstract thoughts (such as about the ultimate laws of the physical universe).

We are familiar with minds moving bodies. In particular, we're familiar with our own minds moving our own bodies. Your conscious decision to raise your arm seems to have some causal relation to your actually raising your arm, whereas the abstract concept 'arm' does not.

Our minds also contain abstract thoughts about laws, concepts, equations, etc. We never encounter abstract entities except in our minds.

Abstract entities are always causally inert. Minds are not.

Now, if if it was just a contest between matter/energy stuff on the one hand, and mind on the other, for being the ultimate explanatory reality, then it might be hard to choose between them. But matter/energy stuff isn't intelligible to us except as it is governed by intelligible laws and other mathematical relations. The latter suggest mind.

Mind, by contrast, is intrinsically intelligible. By that I don't mean that we know how the brain interacts with the mind. I mean that we understand our own mental contents. We understand thoughts and emotions, reasons and meanings, numbers and logic, principles and values, we understand what it is to understand, because we are directly acquainted with it every time we understand something.

Mind can also understand matter. But matter can't understand mind. Nor do abstract entities understand anything, but rather are the objects of the mind's understanding.

Mind can design things, from a shovel to a spaceship to a software program.

Seems to me, then, that if you're looking for the nature of the ultimate explanatory reality, mind has a lot more going for it. That's why most people believe in some kind of God, I suspect.

[muriel_volestrangler]

333. No, you didn't understand my objection

You said "Theism. It has the advantage over Platonism and the Multiverse in being analogous to something we are very familiar with---namely, rational minds, endowed with moral value and causal powers."

Your argument for theism was that it was like things we experience - human minds, and thus a better hypothesis than chance or inevitable physical laws. But the minds we experience all have causes - they arise from the physical bodies we have, which are caused by our parents, etc.

You are proposing something we have never experienced - a mind (complete with your own moral values) that has no cause. This is a huge leap. By proposing such a thing, you lose your original argument that it is a better explanation that the other possibilities.

What you seem to be looking for is a god that is just like you, but has existed for ever. And your arguments elsewhere in this thread (especially post #205) seem to amount to saying that this is such a comforting thought that it must be true.

[Stunster]

334. As a matter of fact

there is no scientific explanation of consciousness. We assume that there is some physical basis for it. But nobody knows why or how it is that a lump of matter can give rise to thoughts, feelings, and all the many phenomenal properties of conscious experience. We are learning more about the neural substrate, and the functional properties of cognition, etc. But why any of this should result in something appearing to consciousness at all, let alone the rich phenomenlogy of mental life, has widely been conceded to be a problem that physics, or materialism generally, is inadequate to explain. This is now widely understood among many philosophers of mind. And so some, like Chalmers, propose that consciousness is ontologically basic, like charge, mass, or spacetime, while others like McGinn, leader of the New Mysterians tell us that consciousness cannot be explained, that it is an inherently unsolvable mystery.

But let's suppose that our minds are caused somehow or other by the physics of the universe, which I have no problem accepting, even though I think that no-one knows how this can be.

Why does the caused nature of our minds render Mind an unsuitable ontological category for being the ultimate explanatory reality? Whatever ultimate explanatory/ontological candidate one chooses is going to be uncaused, and not itself explained by something else. We can see this by thinking about the following question: Why is it the case that anything at all exists, rather than nothing? Well, that is a question which ranges over the whole of reality, whatever the whole of reality comprises. Therefore, there is nothing outside that range in terms of which the question can be answered. Therefore, it is a stupid sort of question in a way. But it's important to see why it's stupid. It's ranging over the whole of reality. And there's nothing beyond the whole of reality in terms of which an explanation for any reality within the range can be given. Hence, the explanatory thing must itself by within the range of the whole of reality.

That implies that at least one thing---whatever there is that is the ultimate explanatory ontological reality---has to be something that itself is not explained by, nor caused by, nor otherwise ontologically dependent for its existence on anything else. (I am making the not unreasonable assumption that an infinite regress of explanations is not itself genuinely explanatory of anything.) This, incidentally, is why asking 'who made God?' is a stupid question to ask a theist, just as 'What made matter?' is a stupid question to ask a materialist. Both the theist and the materialist are each positing what they think is the ultimate explanatory reality. 'What explains the ultimate explanatory reality?' is a stupid question.

So we have a perfect logical reason for thinking that that in terms of which being/reality/the world can be ultimately explained will not itself be caused, or be explained in terms of something else. Ok?

Ok, now our bodies are caused. So are aircraft wings. So are wheat crops, so are trees, so are the bodies of fish and birds, and so is the planet Earth, and the Sun, and so on. But it doesn't follow that matter itself is caused---at least, that is usually what atheists will tell you. From the caused nature of any particular material thing, it doesn't follow that material reality in general, or as such, is caused. That's what they typically say, the atheists.

Now unless there is some principle that says that the atheists must be wrong about this---and that if a particular thing is caused, then the most fundamental ontological property which characterizes that thing must itself be caused---then there is no reason why the SAME refusal to commit the fallacy of composition cannot be imitated by theists. That is to say, if it is correct to reject the inference that because some bodies we're familiar with are caused, bodilyness as such must be caused, then it ought also to be correct to reject the inference that because some minds we're familiar with are caused, mind as such must be caused.

Let me put that another way. Let's say that our bodies are composed of matter, that matter is the 'ontological stuff' out of which bodies are made. While our bodies are undoubtedly caused, it wouldn't follow from that fact that matter itself is caused. Similarly, let's say that our minds are composed of rational consciousness, that rational consciousness is the 'ontological stuff' out of which minds are made. While our minds are undoubtedly caused, it wouldn't follow from that fact that rational consciousness itself is caused.

In other words, rational consciousness and matter are on an equal footing in this regard, or at least they could be, since there are good reasons (see the philosophy of mind references above, and especially Chalmers' position--I'll give you a quote from him in a moment) for treating matter and consciousness as each being irreducible properties of the world.

So now we have to look at other criteria, quite independent of the question of things we encounter in experience being caused or not (since both particular minds and particular material objects both seem to be caused) for choosing which is the best candidate for providing an ultimate explanation of reality, as the conclusion of an inference to the best explanation of all the phenomena our world exhibits---in other words, the best, all-things-considered ultimate explanation of reality. And I refer you to my previous post.

Personally, I think the theistic explanation wins hands down, explaining very intuitively the fine-tuning of the physical laws of our universe, making it capable of of generating evolutionary life-systems; but also explaining why there are the phenomena associated with consciousness, rationality, the sense of free will, mathematical thought, aesthetic appreciation, love, goodness and moral obligation, spiritual joy, religious experience, etc.

Here's Chalmers on the fundamental nature of consciousness:

I suggest that a theory of consciousness should take experience as
fundamental. We know that a theory of consciousness requires the
addition of something fundamental to our ontology, as everything in
physical theory is compatible with the absence of consciousness. We
might add some entirely new nonphysical feature, from which experience
can be derived, but it is hard to see what such a feature would be
like. More likely, we will take experience itself as a fundamental
feature of the world, alongside mass, charge, and space-time. If we
take experience as fundamental, then we can go about the business of
constructing a theory of experience.

[truthpusher]

316. This is where the craziness kicks in..

..with some of the Christian ideas. I think that God can not possibly have a cause. Causes arise from desperation (good or bad)and God if God is in fact 'God' would not be desperate or have a need for a cause. Modern Day Christians as well as followers of many other religions believe that their God has a cause. This way of thinking is whacked! Humans apply their own ideas to everything. Usually with pretty bad results.

[Spinzonner]

41. There is no 'before' time zero

Time and space are inextricable and considerations of time before the 'creation' of the universe as manifested by the existance of space are meaningless.

[papau]

47. true

:-)

[axordil]

167. A common problem

Asking what came "before" the big bang is like asking what is north of the North Pole. It indicates an incorrect frame of reference is being used.

[papau]

250. Metaphysical questions are still permitted, I believe!

:-)

:toast:

have a great weekend!

:-)

[Trajan]

173. Then considerations of a pre-existent entity, ...

Whom 'created' a materially existent universe, based upon an 'intelligent design' is just as meaningless, and further: ridiculous ....

WHY can theology speculate upon infinite 'beings', whilst we, living amidst a self evident materiality, cannot speculate upon the 'infinite' existence of that materiality ? ...

You cannot have it both ways ...

I 'choose' to accept the aesthetic elegence of an 'infinitely existent' potential for the emergence of a matter/energy complex.

I see no reason to believe that since 'time is meaningless', I cannot fathom the infinite nature of the cosmos, versus that of an allegedly human-like creator ....

If 'time is meaningless' .... then the 'hand of god' certainly seems out of place in the great nothingness/everythingness of the singularity ....

[PsychoDad]

206. The argument only works...

As long as your concept of God is constrained inside the Universe as we understand it, within the 4 observible dimensions of finite time/space.

A God existing outside would be totally incomprehinsible to us, and would exist outside of time. Thus to it, time would be meaningless.

All we would know of it would be what it communicate to us if it wished to.

Perhaps there would be a common thread in all religions of humanity.

[Stunster]

231. Self-evident materiality

whilst we, living amidst a self evident materiality

Are our minds self-evidently material? Surely that they are so not self-evidently material is the reason contemporary philosophy of mind is so devoted to debating the mind-body problem. Do a google search for 'David Chalmers the Hard Problem of Consciousness'.

The thing we are most familiar with---namely, our conscious mental experiences---are quite unlike material things.

Our thoughts are about things like stars. But stars are not about anything.

The entire physical universe can be there without consciousness (it presumably was before we came along). But a feeling of pain cannot be there without consciousness.

Heat (in the sense of mean molecular kinetic energy) existed in the universe without consciousness (just after the Big Bang, for example, there was a lot of heat). But if you reduce the feeling you get when you place your hand on a hot stove to mean molecular kinetic energy, and don't include the way it feels when you do that---the phenomenal property of feeling hot---then you've missed a bit of reality. But phenomenal properties seem not to be material properties---you can't weigh the phenomenal property of feeling something hot, or even see it. You can see and weigh a brain that is causing the phenomenal property, but the brain is not the same thing as the phenomenal property, since if x causes y, it must be the case that x is not identical with y.

A blind scientist could know everything there was to know about the laws of physics, chemistry, biology, neurology, etc. But if she has never seen a tomato, does she know what the color red looks like?

In short, it's a staple of contemporary philosophy of mind that materialism has a hard time accounting for consciousness and the phenomenal properties that it contains. One group, led by Colin McGinn, have become known as the New Mysterians, because they hold that the mind-body problem is an intrinsically unsolvable mystery, which physical science is incapable of explaining. They nevertheless cling to a naturalistic worldview, but on faith. Which from a theist's point of view, is kind of ironic. Data don't fit the theory ought to mean change or drop the theory. Consciousness (free will, morality, mathematical thought, in short, all the phenomena associated with reason and value) don't fit with naturalistic materialism....shouldn't you change the theory...?

And remember that consciousness is pretty important, since all science, and indeed all mere perception of the physical, depends upon it.

[Stunster]

232. OOOooops!

Sorry, only the first line was meant to be in italics, since that was the only bit I was quoting you.

[Trajan]

272. I have some serious problems with Chalmers ...

and his solipsistic viewpoint ....

Perception is not in and of itself a requirement for the existence of a material and objective universe ...

Firstly: Perception is objectively processed ... and it's biological foundation is not without fault. Due to imperfect natural processes which can lead to greater or lesser precision or fidelity in the functionality of sense organs, pathways and processing facilities. Genetic or environmental factors can degrade the actual, objective organ, producing low fidelity sensation, which can translate to a defect during processing ... Those that suffer congenital deafness and blindness, or nearsightedness and farsightedness. et al; the fact that a being probably possesses less-than-perfect organs of sense and perception, CANNOT be shown to change or alter the FACTS of the objective reality of the objects which exist EXTERNAL to the sense organs ...

Let's take color, for instance: ... say TWO observers perceive one object simultaneously ... but one observer is color blind ...

We believe that 'color' is a result of the object's material covering's natural frequency and/or wavelength as a photon is bounced off of it, and into the eye ... The eye, being an imperfect mechanical system, responds to that light frequency or wavelength by turning on specific 'rods' or 'cones', which creates a 'translation' of the REAL wavelength information, and forms a stream of information that is communicable through the optic nerve and into the visual cortex .... Yet the imperfections caused by nature will permit some eyes to turn on the wrong rods and cones, or send them to the wrong location, or to alter the information along the optic nerve .. or to block some or all of the information at the cortex ... Since there are MANY parts to these systems, any fault in any one will result in degradation or failure ...

Yet: WHATEVER imperfections exist within the biological system of sight of each observer, we presume the stimulus, IE the reflected photon, STILL contains the ONE frequency or wavelength ... that EACH observer will receive the SAME objective wavelength of light ....

One observer sees the corresponding color .... yet the other observer sees no color due to his sight defect ....

So: Now : Is the object REALLY colored ?? ... or is the object REALLY NOT colored ? ... Is it both colored AND not colored simultaneously ?

How can one explain such an inconsistent definition of an object ? ...

YOU can understand my skepticism of placing the definition of 'real' onto the foundation of 'imperfectly perceived' ... It leds to unresolvable perplexity to hold this view that 'perception' is 'reality' ....


Secondly: There are several fallacious assocations made in this commentary ....

> The thing we are most familiar with---namely, our conscious mental experiences---are quite unlike material things.<

So called 'experiences' are complex interactions; on one hand we have 'material events', and on the other we have 'sense perceptions' ... when we perceive material, objective events, we are using MECHANICAL organs, whose information is communicated through MECHANICAL pathways, and processed through MECHANICAL processes ...

When we 'see' something ... we presume some objective, physical action, like movement of an object, is sensed by our sight organ .... In the Eye, a refraction of the objects 'image' (IE the light reflecting off the object) is then MECHANICALLY translated into altered but communicable information that can be sent along a pathway, in this case the Optic Nerve, which MECHANICALLY carries this information to it's termination at the visual cortex, where the translated information is MECHANICALLY processed by the visual cortex, and 'presented' to our 'mind' as sight ....

The seen object is the source of the stimulus which establishes visual perception ... it is not 'created' by the perceiving process ...

What we 'see' ... is NOT a 'real' object ... it is an imperfect representation of that object ....

In other words: what we 'see' in our 'mind' is NOT real ... it is an ABSTRACTION of the real .... IF we suffer from a MECHANICAL fault in any of the sensory processing subsystems: either in the sense organ, in the pathway, or in the processing: then the 'real' object will not be perceived correctly ...

Given that nature does NOT produce perfect organs, ALL live beings suffer from varying degrees of imperfection, and hence: defective perceptions of objective reality .... Given THAT fact: can we say that what we PERCEIVE, in our mind, is the 'reality' ? ..

IF one is color blind, does color not exist in the whole objective universe ? ... When numerous beings perceive the same object, and share their experiences: does the object itself change according to the 'mind' of the specific observer ? ... Does the object actually exist in ALL states of individual perception simultaneously ? ...

Obviously: one cannot rely on 'mind' to present a perceived 'reality', given its propensity to fault and defect by nature ....

What exists in 'mind' is an abstraction of reality, not THE reality ... anymore than a picture of a bird IS a bird ....

So yes: 'mind' is not a 'material thing', but it is the result of a MECHANICAL, material set of things ... Mind isnt 'real' ... it is an abstraction ...

>The entire physical universe can be there without consciousness (it presumably was before we came along). But a feeling of pain cannot be there without consciousness<

Again: it is fallacious to associate a perception of a REAL thing AS a real thing itself ...

What is pain ? .. can you smell pain ? ... can you see it ? ... Pain is a perception of negative stimulus which our biological systems are attuned to identify as a significant danger to our systemic survival .... Pain is atavistic; it is not 'real' as a concrete thing .... it is an abstraction of the MECHANICAL communication of the nervous system to our processing centers that a part of our physical body is damaged ... the greater the damage, the greater the sensation of 'pain' ....

Pain, in this sense, is a TOOL of our biological systems, with the 'pain' generated by a MECHANICAL injury acting as a clarion call to our system to act in protection of itself ...

The MECHANICAL damage is real ... the 'pain' is an abstract representation of the 'real' injury ....

The pain is NOT itself 'real' ....

It is fallacious to associate our abstract perceptions as 'real' ... ONLY the MECHANICAL systems which support the perceptions, and the external stimulus which affect those systems MECHANICALLY can be identified as a 'concrete reality' ...

I reject the solipsistic worldview entirely on that basis ....

-----------------

Chalmers theories rely on the extention of 'consciousness' beyond the biological systems which seem to provide the MECHANICAL foundation for individual, biologically-based thought and mind ... He extends his own personal experience of mind, into a 'meta-consciousness'; a universal 'mind' of which all individual consciousness taps into, like feeding from the maw ....

Yet there is no evidence of the existence of a NON BIOLOGICAL, universal consciouness, other than a priori speculations (which are just as abstract and unreal as our perceptions) ....

But there IS evidence of trillions of earthly beings using their imperfect and/or defective organs to try to navigate a cold and dangerous universe .... while hopefully 'perceiving' a minimum amount of 'pain' on the trip ....

[Stunster]

278. Hmmmm....

Are you saying that consciousness, or the phenomenal properties of experience, are not real?

But surely that's the whole point of cogito, ergo sum---that we can doubt the existence of everything else, but we can't doubt the existence of our own consciousness.

This of course does not entail solipsism. We have plenty of good reasons not to be solipsists. But we don't experience MECHANICAL processes directly---we experience them via the phenomenal properties of our conscious experience. A mechanic can fix the car only because he's seeing things, feeling things, and thinking about things. Without these mental contents of consciousness, we would know nothing about anything MECHANICAL at all.

But if that is so, then it is probably not a good idea to cast doubt on the reality of these mental contents---since we need them to be real and reasonably reliable to know anything valid about the external world at all.

None of this means that we might be brains in a vat.

But to deny the reality of the mental contents of consciousness, or of phenomenal properties, is to deny, in essence, what Descartes' Cogito is meant to show cannot coherently be denied---namely the reality of our own minds.

That would be materialism gone mad, and if anything, worse than solipsism.

[daleo]

24. A star is fairly simple really

It isn't all that hard to model a star mathematically. Life, and especially advanced mental life is orders of magnitude more complex, in my opinion, and the opinion of many notable people.

There is a rather famous anecdote about a cosmology seminar, where one of the participants pointed to a gardener out in the university quad, and said "explaining that person's mind is much more complex than anything we will discuss today".

[Trajan]

35. well ... as a system ...

it is simple ...

as a grouping of objects: it is massively complex ....

The number of objects organized by nature into a stellar object system is greater in size to the number of objects organized by nature into a simple living organism ...

Systemically: a main sequence star is many orders LESS complex (as a system) than the simplest life forms .... yet IF they collapse: (and they do) they suddenly (AGAIN through natural forces) 're-organize' into massive elemental objects through nucleosynthetic processes, with the forces of nature grinding out trillions of different units of over a hundred different elements .... one might compare such a system of systems to a life form: where over a hundred different biological subsystems (organs, nervous, musculature, etc ) are formed with billions of similar cells ....

There are different kinds of complexity .... but there are certainly similarities between biological system complexity versus stellar and galaxial system complexity .....

[daleo]

43. But complexity relates to system, not number

A star may be enormous and may have a stupendous number of components, but they interact in a relatively small number of ways, and the overall number of degrees of freedom of the system is quite small. If you like, the range of behaviors available to a star is quite small, compared to the range of behaviors available to an organism, especially an intelligent organism (or better yet, a system of intelligent organisms, like DU). That is why the behavior of a star (or a star system) can be modeled fairly simply with differential equations and the like, while human psychology is just not amenable to that sort of treatment.

This doesn't prove the existence of God or anything, but I don't think one should minimize the problem of explaining the complexity of living things. It may all exist on a continuum of complexity, but the range of the continuum is vast indeed.

[jwcomer]

208. Complexity is just a word with no scientific meaning.

The degrees of freedom of a star is a truly stupefying number. Put another way, the star has an enormous entropy. What you are trying to say is that from a macroscopic perspective the system may be reduced to a relatively benign system of equations of state in equilibrium set by statistical mechanics. From a macroscopic perspective, the system is relatively un-complex. But this is because we have removed an enormous sum of approximately redundant degrees of freedom and considered them equivalent and thus irrelevant. If the sun actually had very few degrees of freedom, then it would have very little entropy, and would have very little thermal temperature, and we would be frozen solid. That we are not frozen solid is evidence enough to show that the sun is quite complex.

[daleo]

252. Degrees of freedom is perhaps the wrong choice of words

It certainly has a precise meaning in statistical mechanics and I was really using it metaphorically. Range of behaviors is really more to the point. A star can only "do" a few things, while an organism (especially a human being) can do a great many things.

A deck of playing cards also has a great number of possible states of being, but there are only a few that we consider significant. Matter has many possible ways it can be arranged, but only a few result in living things. In this sense living things are more complex than stars.

The fact that we are discussing the issue, and stars aren't, for me demonstrates that we possess a higher level of complexity than stars.

On edit - I don't agree that complexity has no scientific meaning. Scientists use the concept very frequently, so it certainly has meaning in that sense. I suppose, operationally, I would relate it to entropy as well - i.e. how unlikely or non-random a state is. Of course that sneaks in mental phenomena - a straight is more unlikely than 1-7-5-Q-8, but that is only because there are poker players around to consider the distinction significant. I don't really see a way out of that dilema.

[Trajan]

276. If one takes a star ...

and SMASHES it into an object the size of a small moon: it heats to an amazingly high temperature and fuses nearly everything within the shell, in nearly every single combination ...

Hence the existence of elements other than hydrogen and helium ....

Such events are known to occur, and are known to create complex structures which defy imagination ... even if temporarily ...

Now: when we look to a biological entity ... like a human being ... see see literally BILLIONS of cells combined into a complex system of systems ... yet: each of those cells are nearly identical in form, with small differences in genetic expression of the same type of cell creating large differences in physical dimension .... hence why stem cells, being 'one type of object', can be switched to any number of cell types .... and used to form very complex biological subsystems.....

Hydrogen atoms, converted to helium ..... and further: crunched into the manifold elements in supernova events ... IE they ALSO change in size and dimension ... and go on to form perhaps millions of different molecular compounds .... all naturally, through natural forces already known to exist ....

As an aside: I will note that the human body requires at LEAST a second generation star to gather the material to form a human body .... post supernova ....

So: .... It isnt the 'main sequence' star object I was referring to, but the cataclysmic complexity of a supernova events ....

[daleo]

324. The interaction of a star with a moon will create greater complexity

But, the interaction of a society of human beings is much more complex in my opinion. Granted, a supernova event creates new elements (or allows sub-atomic particles to join up differently, and manifest their innate structure and capabilities differently), but physicists believe that the process is predictable, and have constructed (apparently) good models of the process.

A discussion among astronomers about the process, on the other hand, creates new ideas, which are inherently unpredictable, unless one assumes some type of Platonic realm. Thus, I think astronomers are inherently more complex than the things they study, even if they are ultimately composed of those very things. I suppose the higher order complexity of astronomers would be considered an emergent property of the lower order complexity of supernova events.

[truthpusher]

50. Very well put.

[KittyWampus]

69. Organization Is A Kind Of Intelligence. You Mistakenly Suppose

that "Intelligence" is indistinguishable from a "Personality".

Groupings are creations... they are not necessary implicit in Reality.

[VegasWolf]

79. Not necessarily, another viewpoint is that "intelligence", ours,

sees organization where only chaos exists. I prefer
my take. You are pretty free telling others that
they are mistaken. There is another
possibility you know.

[KittyWampus]

172. Chaos Alone Would Not Enable Evolution, The Ability To Measure Or

the Manipulation of our environments.

Chaos and Organization are BOTH inherent in the Universe.

And without some internal, innate capacity for Organization, things would simply fall apart.

If someone posits a theory which excludes a great deal of phenomena or a basic Principle of the Univese than its simply wrong.

[VegasWolf]

192. Amazing, you completely misread my post. n/t

[UberSG-1Fan]

119. organized by....

who or what? by implication, a universe of order cannot randomly and spontaneously come into being. there has to be something or dare i say someone that creates the organization because life and the universe is too complex to be a random event...

that would be like taking all of the ingredients of fudge brownies (one of my favorite treats) even more than that - more ingredients than the recipe calls for - and just throwing them together, no measuring, no pattern, and yet you have perfect fudge brownies?

(i know, not a great analogy, but i'm hungry for brownies for some reason...) :)

[Arianrhod]

125. Your argument is two centuries old, refuted endlessly by

science. First postulated by William Paley in 1802, except that he claimed life was like a pocket watch. (Your analogy is closer to the truth, but still misses the mark by a large margin.) I happen to own an 1803 edition of his book, "Natural Theology". Utterly unconvincing.

Proteins don't need any outside help in forming organic substances. They do so quite nicely on their own, but will reproduce themselves at an astounding rate if you add heat and light. They create long chains of themselves, break apart and add different arrangements, reproduce and coalesce and act as catalysts for other reactions. No stirring required. :)

The whole ID argument that the Universe is somehow "too complex to have happened" is really just a reflection of how feeble the minds are that are contemplating it. It may be true that humans will never fully understand it, but the positing of beings somehow "greater than ourselves" in order to explain it is self-defeating. After all, if the Universe is too complex to have arisen on its own, then a being greater than the Universe is far too complex to have arisen on its own.

Simpler to just stick with what we can experience, instead of wishing for something else to work with.

[Stunster]

236. I think you're wrong

I can't recommend too highly MODERN PHYSICS AND ANCIENT FAITH, by Stephen M. Barr (University of Notre Dame Press, 2003) ISBN 0-268-03471-0. If you come away from reading it as an intellectually fulfilled materialist, you'll have a heck of a lot of explaining to do. Personally, I think he utterly demolishes materialism. And he's a professor of physics at the renowned Bartol Research Institute at the University of Delaware.

I have read quite a few books on science (I recently purchased Brian Greene's latest work, THE FABRIC OF THE COSMOS, having greatly enjoyed THE ELEGANT UNIVERSE) and on the science-religion relationship. This one by Barr is as good as anything I've ever read, if not better. The writing is absolutely pellucid, and he covers an enormous amount of difficult ground in the most illuminating way yet in a relatively short space.

To cite one example: I've taken graduate seminars on the philosophy of quantum mechanics in both Berkeley and Los Angeles, and read literally thousands of pages on this topic. The chapter by Barr on Quantum Theory and the Mind (a mere 18 pages) is probably the best single thing I've read in this area, and certainly the clearest explanation of the central philosophical issue it raises I've come across.

Anyhow, his book should sweep away a host of common prejudices and deep-seated misconceptions. I don't mind admitting that I relied in part on his penetrating analysis of the Dawkins' 'Blind Watchmaker' argument. Allow me to quote two nice passages from Barr's book, which give some of its flavour and promise, and refers to Paley's argument and Dawkins' response to it:

Evolution, presumably, occurred through the normal operation of
natural laws. But this was only possible, as I shall argue in the
next chapters, because the laws of nature are themselves quite
special. The biologist Richard Dawkins, referring to William Paley's
"watch argument", calls the universe the "Blind Watchmaker". The
"watches", for Dawkins, are the intricate structures of living things.
The universe, mindlessly following its mechanical laws, has succeeded
in crafting these astonishing structures by repeated trial and error.
What Dawkins does not seem to appreciate is that his Blind Watchmaker
is something even more remarkable than Paley's watches. Paley finds a
"watch", and asks how such a thing could have come to be there by
chance. Dawkins finds an immense automated factory that blindly
constructs watches, and feels that he has completely answered Paley's
point. But that is absurd. How can a factory that makes watches be
less in need of explanation than the watches themselves? Paley, if
still alive, would be entitled to ask Dawkins how his Blind Watchmaker
came to be there. Perhaps Dawkins would answer that it was produced
by a Blind "Blind Watchmaker" Maker. (p.111)

The origin-of-life problem is made very hard by the fact that that
first, "primitive" life-form was probably already enormously
complicated. Partly in response to claims that vestiges of one-celled
life had been discovered in Martian rocks, biologists have given some
thought to the minimum requirements for a self-reproducing one-celled
organism. It appears that it needs to have quite an elaborate
structure, involving dozens of different proteins, a genetic code
containing at least 250 genes, and many tens of thousands of bits of
information. For chemicals to combine in random ways in a "primordial
soup" to produce a strand of DNA or RNA containing such a huge amount
of genetic information would be as hard as for a monkey to accidentally type an epic poem. Decades of attempts to solve this problem have borne little fruit. Consequently, there are those who argue that none of the three ways of naturally explaining structure that we have discussed--pure chance, law, and natural selection--are capable of explaining the origin of life. They contend that this impossibility adds up to an irrefutable proof of divine intervention. However, this proof has a loophole. It is probably correct to say that natural selection and law are insufficient to explain the origin of life. But actually pure chance may be enough. The point is that the universe may well be infinitely large and have an infinite number of planets. This would be the case, for example, in the standard Big Bang cosmological model if the universe has an "open" geometry. (See chapter 7, pp. 48-52.) No matter how small the probability of life forming accidentally on a single planet, as long as that probability is finite, life is bound to form if there exist a truly infinite number of planets. Returning to the monkey-and-typewriter analogy, then some of them will inevitably be typing _Hamlet_. In fact, as remarkable as it sounds, it can be shown that if there are truly an infinite number of planets then somewhere there must exist a planet identical to ours in every particular, on which live species exactly like our own, and indeed on which lives a being who is genetically and in every other way biologically identical to you. Infinity is a very large number. Are there an infinite number of planets? It is impossible for us to know by direct observation, because we cannot see what lies beyond our "horizon" of about 15 billion light-years. (See pp. 54-57.) But it is interesting that in order to explain the origin of life from inanimate matter in a way that does not invoke divine intervention it may be necessary to postulate an unobservable infinity of planets. Does this ring a bell? In chapter 7 we saw that in order to avoid a beginning of time, the materialist has to assume that before the Big Bang there was an infinite stretch of time about which (almost certainly) nothing can be known by direct observation. We shall see in later chapters other cases where the materialist, in order to avoid drawing unpalatable conclusions from scientific discoveries, has to postulate unobservable infinities of things. How ironic that, having renounced belief in God because God is not material or observable by sense or instrument, the atheist may be driven to postulate not one but an infinitude of unobservables in the material world itself! In any event, we have identified three ways of explaining complicated structures naturally: (1) pure chance (combined, possibly, with the supposition of an infinite universe), (2) the laws of nature, and (3) natural selection. Does the possibility of such explanations fatally undermine the age-old Argument from Design? Has science, in this case at least, eroded the credibility of the religious worldview?

It is to this question that I shall now turn. The two versions of
the Argument from Design that we distinguished between, the cosmic and
the biological, raise somewhat different issues and should be
discussed separately. I will begin with the Cosmic Design Argument
and in particular with the question of whether the laws of nature can
themselves be a substitute for God in explaining the order that is
seen "in the heavens and on earth". (pp. 74-75.)

Barr uses five 20th century major discoveries in science--the Big Bang theory, unified field theories, the anthropic cosmological principle,
Godel's Incompleteness Theorems, and quantum mechanics--to pretty much shatter the foundations of the materialist worldview and to make a religious worldview far more credible than the conventional wisdom of the Zeitgeist had previously thought.

It's an excellent read.

[Arianrhod]

331. I don't see how this makes me wrong.

I've been involved in the Creationism debate for about 30 years now. I've watched the Creationists as they infiltrated schools, textbook producers, school boards, and government offices. I've seen them sneak their Creationist tracts illegally into classrooms, seen them file lawsuits, seen them start their own legal firms to push the agenda. I've seen them propagandize and lie and cheat and steal.

The religious fanatics in our country have recently completely taken over everything, but they've been working this agenda for 50 years now. Duane Gish began the Institute of Creation Research in 1959--a think-tank that requires its members to take an oath vowing not to change their minds no matter what the evidence might show. There is no "science" involved in this agenda. But today, they have infiltrated so many levels of society that they are able, like never before, to present their ideas as if they were science, using as spokesmen philosophers who have been influenced by the trend in society towards embracing religion and religious ideas. That doesn't mean that these men and women speak for science; it simply means that they are allowing their personal viewpoints to infiltrate their work.

I've been called a fanatic and a bigot and closed-minded for holding to this opinion, but as I said, I've watched it take place for decades. Science in America is not what it used to be. And now we have an administration that is tearing science out by the roots.

As an atheist, I have never alleged that god doesn't exist on the basis that I can't see or feel him.* I feel divinity in everything, in the utter interconnectedness of all things, of the One Thing. Everything is god; but if everything is god, then nothing is god. There is no distinction between god, man, animals or vegetables. But the argument positing a Creator doesn't make any sense. If the finite Universe is too perfect, too complex, and too orderly to have come about on its own, then how in the world could an infinite perfect, complex, orderly being come about on its own? The Christian/Creationist/IDer answers: "God was always there." End of discussion.

End of Reason.

Show me a book with a theory on how god came to be, and I'll read that. I've read far too many of the others.

* Let's face it, in every Western book written on this subject, god is always a "him"; it is always the Christian god we are discussing. That in and of itself makes the whole Design argument suspicious in my book. Its proponents almost inevitably can be shown to have an agenda, and the majority of the vocal ones also happen to have degrees in theology from Christian schools. While this doesn't disqualify them per se as scientists (think Mendel), it certainly rings alarm bells regarding the Creationism discussion. Or at least, it ought to.

[VegasWolf]

8. So his thesis is that the universe is so complex, there must be

a god. Lack of understanding the complexity is
a negative, and hardly proof of the existence of god.
Didn't Kierkegaard try this line once.

[truthpusher]

18. I have a question...

...example: a stalk of celery is as complex as a stalk of celery gets, right? Simply put, a stalk of celery does what a stalk of celery does. Question: What about humans? Are humans only as complex as humans get and a can humans only do what humans can do.

If there was a God, could we even understand what it is? Are we complex enough to understand? Are we limited in our understanding in the same way a stalk of celery is limited to being what it is, a stalk of celery?

I think this is where the divide between the Theists and the Atheists lies. The Theists are believers because they think that they are complex enough (aka: divine) to understand God. On the other hand an Atheist can not logically comprehend God where he explains away God based on the fact that incomprehensibility makes the idea a non-reality.

Because we can not understand or explain a God intelligently, does this mean God does not exist?

[VegasWolf]

49. No, and because we cannot explain complexity doesn't prove that god does.

Hell, we didn't understand electricity, or areodynamics,
or nuclear fission a two hundred years ago. What gives
anyone the idea we have all the answers now?

[Barrett808]

19. Sounds like the old argument from design

Long known to be a fallacy.

[VegasWolf]

53. Huh? What we don't understand has to be true? Really?

[KittyWampus]

73. Complexity Demands An Innate Capacity For Organization. That Is An

"Intelligence" which YOU mistakenly think of a seperate personality.

[VegasWolf]

78. Where does complexity demand an innate capacity for organization.

That is nonsense. Especially complex chaos.
I don't think of any "Intelligences" beyond our own
so I have no idea what you mean by a separate personality.

[KittyWampus]

170. Why Do You Presume That "Intelligence" Is The Perogative Of Seperate

entities?

And in order to hold together there NEEDS to be an innate capacity to Organize... or things would simply fall apart.

Chaos and Organization are BOTH inherent Principles pervading the Universe.

They are both "Intelligences".

[VegasWolf]

193. You really have a hard time reading other's posts. I said I don't

believe in ANY "Intelligences," regardless whether
they a vanilla, choclate or strawberry.

[bullimiami]

12. Just what I was thinking. Senility....or mad cow......nt

[JohnOneillsMemory]

13. Psy-ops Christmas Season or Advancing the Theocracy in the Media...

The football of the 'Biblical moral values' meme in the mainstream media post-Nov. 2 is being run down the field as far as possible during this year's Christmas season to accomplish several things:

1) Empty our pockets into the weaponized economy as usual
2) Inflame the Culture War aka 'red vs. blue'
3) Entrench support in the evangelical base who are about to see their kids killed overseas in large numbers before the 1/30/05 'elections' in Iraq and for a long time after that bloodbath.

Irrational thinking and hatred are fascist tools used to divide and conquer the public. You can read this in the US Army's psy-ops manuals written by both Machiavelli and Hitler in 'The Prince' and 'Mein Kampf' respectively.

The Dominionist alliance between the Chosen Few, Master Race, and Pentagon is in every Orwellian corporate Christmas display that embodies the exact opposite of Christ's teachings of peace and nurturance.

Challenge for liberals:
Embrace Christ's teachings called the Beatitudes and beat conservatives over the head with them.

"Blessed are the peace makers..."

[truthpusher]

27. The Beatitudes can kick the Shit out of any of the lameness being...

...spouted today by your basic Christian Fascist. You know, you hear God hates fags much more these days than the meek shall inherit the earth.

[JohnOneillsMemory]

30. LOL. Yeah, Christ kicks some serious ass!

My Baptist-raised Episcopalian mother always tried to encourage me to address adversaries by "killing them with kindness."

Unfortunately, she tried this on an abusive husband who only got worse and it took her twenty years to figure out that doesn't always work and ditch the s.o.b.

Now liberals are learning the same lesson about fascists...

[VegasWolf]

54. that's because we all know that the corporations own the earth!n/t

[reprobate]

201. Hey, my god can kick your god's ass.

Are we no better than children comparing our father's willingness to fight?

Actually, when you consider that god was created in the image of man, and that we all create our own gods, that's not far from truth.

[LoZoccolo]

60. Sounds like you believe this story fits into something so complex...

...that there must be something behind it.

[JohnOneillsMemory]

109. I think all the press about religion and Christmas is a weaponization

of cultural differences and passions for the purpose of dividing and conquering the masses by fascists.

In short, these religious stories are there to mess with our heads so they can conquer us and take over the world.

American Scientific Fascism, or 'Friendly Fascism,' uses psychology to control and misdirect people by sowing confusion and encouraging irrationality, the goal being to induce the Authoritarian Personality among the masses.

After WWII, scientists examined why so many under Hitler, Franco, and Mussolini had embraced the violence and hatred of fascism.

http://www.anesi.com/fscale.htm
(Testing for Fascism Receptivity or the F-factor)

They found a common pattern:
Artificially induced fear leading to group-think, sublimation of identity to the herd, and attacks on outsiders. This leads them to embrace a Strong Father figure (fuhrer) for a sense of mental security.
http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/07/22_politics.shtml
(What Makes a Conservative Brain)

Fascists use the divisive moralizing of sex and religion to anger people and turn them against each other.

It works if the brain has been filled with irrational dogmas to be defended against the competing and 'inferior other.' Targets are the same as the Nazi's: Jews, Gays, Africans, the poor, the weak, etc.

http://empirewatch.org/pages/_archives/fascism/pages/14_symptoms.html
(The 14 Symptoms of Fascism)

There is currently a powerful alliance between the religious right wing that wants to replace the US Constitution with the Bible (called Christian Reconstructionists) and the corporations who have owned and operated the US government for decades.The corporations ALSO want to eliminate the US Constitution. This anti-Constitutional alliance is called Dominionism and it is working so far.

Both groups influence policies by corrupting or actually becoming our Senators and Congressman. This is how democracy is being successfully eliminated bit by bit through propaganda (called psy-ops or psychological operations), infiltration, and legislation.

http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_5160.shtml
(The Despoiling of America: How George W. Bush became the head of the new American Dominionist Church/State)

That's why the fascist-controlled media outlets are filled with the 'moral values' and religion stories, during the presidential campaign and especially after Nov 2nd, to capitalize on the idea that Bush* is more virtuous and is sanctioned to rule by God so more people will thing that liberal Democrats are therefore of the Devil himself and must be fought against tooth and nail.

This is why someone as hateful as Ann Coulter has an audience and lucrative career and George W. Bush controls the White House and the largest defense budget on the planet with impunity.

[shrike]

15. Many indigenous peoples were deists

They believed in a God who had "created" things, but played little to no part in the affairs of men.

Old concept.

[karlrschneider]

16. At 81, sounds like Pascal's wager...

:eyes:

[NashVegas]

22. "more or less"

:)

[LoZoccolo]

58. Until you look at the facts.

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.

:eyes:

[VegasWolf]

64. True! n/t

[Liberal Veteran]

17. Well, I for one am happy that he has come to acknowledge...

...the greatness of the primordial tortoise that shat forth the earth!

Their is hope for everyone.

[shrike]

21. Oh come on, guys

It's not like he believes in Jesus or the angels.

He has the right to believe, just the way he had the right NOT to believe.

[Liberal Veteran]

25. Given that this story qualifies as "news".....

....I think it's open to a bit of mockery.

I could personally care less whether he believes or disbelieves in a diety or not and everyone wearing their religion (or lack thereof) on their sleeves is why such nonsense is worthy of mockery.

[truthpusher]

31. At least as newsworthy as a Republican/Democrat switching parties.

[shrike]

89. Flew was asked a question and he answered it

How does that qualify as "wearing it on his sleeve?"

[Sideways]

131. Hey At Least He Isn't Wearing It On His Epaulets Ala W

EOM

[shrike]

185. Thank God (or god) for that

[Tacos al Carbon]

285. And he has a perfect right

To believe in Jesus and the angels if he so chooses.

[shrike]

296. Quite true (nt)

[MindPilot]

23. probably about as accurate as the stories

of Carl Sagan's "deathbed conversion".

[shrike]

90. There are no stories of Sagan's deathbed conversion

at least none that I've heard.

I'd be disappointed as hell if Sagan "converted."

[hatrack]

149. He didn't convert - not to worry

And neither did Feynman, who still has the best quote about death I've yet heard: "I'd hate to die twice - it's so boring."

[MrPrax]

29. So confronted by a mystery...?

So confronted by a mystery, the GreatMind© roots about in his well-worn kit bag and says, 'well...OK...let's just call it God'

Brilliant!!! Stop The Presses!!

This is really not much above blaming UFOs for lost airline luggage, save for the toney language and crude populism of noting that God is probably NOT a miserable human being...

What Next in the Series? Little Girl Loses Faith In Christmas!

[truthpusher]

33. That would be sad.

[VegasWolf]

55. That's always worked. No one really understands god works well also. n/t

[Reverend Smoothfield]

32. forgive me for pulling rank

but if nature is so wonderful and complex that only an intelligent creator could have made it, then surely the existence of such a wonderful and complex creator implies the existence of an even MORE intelligent creator who created God, and so on and so forth. i mean, doesn't it?

[Gregorian]

36. Yes. And he died for your credit card sins

Edit- I had to post and run, due to missing an episode of Julia Child.
BUT, if this being were infinite, and time were not to affect it, then it could be true. Now, back to baking with Julia Child.

[VegasWolf]

57. Absurd isn't it? n/t

[KittyWampus]

71. Once Again, You Mistakenly Say Intelligent "Creator" & Imply A Person

rather than looking at the Reality that Life depends upon an apriori "Intelligence"... which is not necessarily embodied within a
"Person".

[Reverend Smoothfield]

77. don't follow

is that book what i think it is?

[VegasWolf]

81. I beileve that the good reverend is implying a giant turtle that

is all powerful and has mean eyes.

[muriel_volestrangler]

130. What is Reality, as opposed to reality?

and where has 'Life depends upon an apriori "Intelligence"' come from? This sounds like an opinion to me. Is that what your capitals are meant to indiciate - a subjective intrepretation that other people may not agree with?

I can't see where you have shown that anyone is mistaken. You've just asserted it. Do you care to give some reasoning?

[Tight_rope]

128. That's Deep...Welcome to DU Reverend Smoothfield !

[pop goes the weasel]

38. so now

how does he explain the existence of this god? All he's done is put another layer of complexity into a complex process, and done so without any particular justification. It reminds me of the comic panel where some scientist is trying to figure out an equation, gives up, and jots "then a miracle happens."

[Bouncy Ball]

42. I don't see what the big deal is about this.

So he believes in God now. Ok. No skin off anyone's nose here, right?

Who cares?

[MatrixEscape]

44. The problem with Atheism

is that it is distinguished by "not believing".

The only reason that I prefer being an Agnostic is that it is an open mind approach to what could be seen as a quest for verification rather than the anti-thesis to an established socio-cultural domination.

Also, some people prefer to figure out if we can believe in an "I" or a "we" which can, conceptually, be questioned and has not been satisfactorily answered from a philosophical point-of-view.

All solipsism aside, if you ever ask the question of anything existing, especially persons, you can do so even in the light of empirical evidence of stuff in the material sense. You can say, there is “stuff” that is “out there”. However, if you “roll yourself back” to the point were your physical organism was acculturated, there are some serious and interesting questions about verbalization, symbols, and mythos that plays into your concept of “existing” as an entity. If you were a feral child, raised by wolves, would you have the same notions?

When you look at many mainstream religions, you find that there is a lot of support, (at least in the modernized context) for the Ego. While the personality is intangible, people do believe in a personality or a person as being real. The religious support is interesting in that it often ends up being a refuge for the fear of “non-existence”. You have a “Soul” that is either created prior to your birth, or you have one that migrates through many lives, etc. Then, in effect, you extrapolate that this implies that the ego, in whatever shape or form, does not find surcease when the body is no longer a functioning organism.

Physically, you, (what you are comprised of) did exist prior to being the conscious entity you now conceive yourself to be. You will exist after the complex organism you identify with ceases to be alive and animate. Your stuff will be re-cylded. So, we can still admit to there being a Universe of stuff, (boiled down to rates of vibration and electrical charges) and get very close to seeing that our concepts of it, (which we have to believe in and find support for, individually or collectively) are a meta-level of interpretation and secondary, even artificial, in essence. The difference is subtle and we act “as if” it is not. It is by consensus and re-enforcement that we can believe in the egoic, social, and various symbolic extrapolations of mental and emotional reality.

Well, I enjoyed that ramble ... now move on and ignore it! That is, if you exist. BTW: You cannot argue with a solipsist ;) j/k

[truthpusher]

59. The difference is very subtle.

[VegasWolf]

61. Funny, I thought that way for a long time. I even wrote a paper

arguing that agnosticism was the only pure philosophical
stance one could take all because of the problem of belief,
as you pointed out. Now, in my older years I have come
to find the whole concept of god an absurdity beyond
any imagining and i realized that even though i can't
prove anything my gut instincts tell me no damn way.
So now i'm an atheist.

[truthpusher]

63. You say gut instincts? what do you mean by that?

[VegasWolf]

83. What do you think gut instincts mean?n/t

[truthpusher]

159. Where do the gut instincts come from?

[VegasWolf]

196. Mars, that's why tinfoil is so necessary. Seriously, they are just

a subconscious realization occurring below the level of
active consciousness. They are your thoughts based
upon your life experiences, knowledge, and assumptions
about the probability of any given outcome occurring.
That's my take.

[truthpusher]

204. It sounded more like a 6th sense sort of thing, that's why I ask.

[MatrixEscape]

67. I see ...

Thanks for your response.

Well, that is admirable. I think that working it though, regardless of the conclusion, is far better than belief for its own sake. The assumption that belief is an end in itself is problematic to me. It is like seeking the truth and settling for half-truths or lies merely because it is comfortable to do so -- a protracted sojourn.

Oddly, while I am not promoting or advocating "intelligent design", it is noteworthy that one's "observations" can yield an some interesting and provocative questions.

The objective nature of scientific approach still relies on a subjective interaction. All scientific measurement aside, that then colors our objectivity in various degrees. The questions of order versus chaos, meaning, intelligence, and implications of meta-levels are all fascinating and, to me, open-ended. That is where my form of Agnosticism has led me. Rather than a logical positivism, reductionism, or grossly materialistic perspective, there are still factors that motivate progressive inspection. In that case, it is dynamic.

The classic example is a third-state regarding the synergy of material and experiential modes. You hold an orange in you hand. It has mass, form, and function, (food) to you. It has x number and types of atoms, molecules, compounds, etc. It reflects light at a certain wavelength. And yet, you peel it. You smell it. You bite right into into it and taste it. Subjectively, there is something that seems to transcend the material and functional aspects of the object. That applies to many "qualities" that we experience where the whole seems to be greater than the sum of the parts. This is very curious.

The subject is large, but I just wanted to note that there are various ways to approach the idea of Agnosticism. We can see things with different types of eyes depending on what we are "looking" at and the context. I would even posit that science, (in the physical realm) has tenets that can be based on faith or belief in very abstract mathmatical theories. In fact, that demonstrates the value of faith or belief in that it is a place where you can start a long journey, but not the place you should stay or hope to end up.

[VegasWolf]

92. Yes, it is true that all observations are subjective. I think it

fundamentally comes down to whether or not one sees an
inherent order in the universe or they see chaos. I see just chaos.
Thanks for the good discussion!

[truthpusher]

95. You sound like Isabelle Huppert in I Heart Huckabees...

...not a bad thing.

[VegasWolf]

96. LOL! Thank's I guess! n/t

[Malikshah]

56. What is with ABC News these days?

I take it the rapture has taken place....they seem awfully TBN as of late

Matthew Shephard....poo-pooing voter fraud....maninstream Talibornagain...now this.

Seems like they've had the Koolaid and come back for more.

This goes beyond talking about religion. This is insidious and scary.

[truthpusher]

62. How is this scary?

For the 150,000 story's about a fight at a basketball game, we can at least have one about an aging philosopher. I think this is actually more in the academic category than that of religion. I think only the truly fanatic will see this as some sort of evidence of a trend.

[Malikshah]

103. When you add up the stories I listed

It begins to form a pattern. That is all I am pointing out.

One story here. One story there. It adds up.

One school board member here, one mayor there, one supervisor of elections there.

Sorry-- there's a pattern.

[truthpusher]

114. I definitely believe that there is a pattern...

...but I don't think that this story falls in that category. What you might be referring to are what I refer to as 'Christian Torch and Pitchfork' stories; something more along the lines of a kid being sent home from school for praying or like here in Denver recently: there was a big story about our mayor wanting to change a public sign from Merry Christmas to Happy Holidays. These are stories that get slow people riled up. The media loves these kind of stories. I don't think the Antony Flew story falls in that category.

[arwalden]

68. "At Age 81"... it sounds like he knows the end is near and he's just...

... afraid of death and wants to hedge his bets. Or it could be senile dementia.

-- Allen

[BattyDem]

74. We all know what this is about ...

Antony Flew has always been an athiest, but since he's old and probably going to die soon, he figured he'd begin to praise God ... just in case. :eyes:

[VegasWolf]

85. Ha, i always thought that if there really were a god, he would punish

one for intellectual dishonesty for switching sides
at the last moment just to keep all options open.

[LoZoccolo]

94. Nah, I know different.

Cuz I followed the link and found this:

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.

[Politicub]

107. What a loaded word

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.

Big word that, "still." Implies that the old man doesn't yet believe in an afterlife. Why, what an old fool! Still not believing in the afterlife.

If this article weren't being intellectually dishonest, then it would have left the word "still" from the sentence. i.e. "a spry man who does not believe in an afterlife."

This story bothers me -- and not because of an 81 year old philisopher I've never heard of espouses a belief in god. It appears to me to be more stoking of the flames between believers and non-believers. Pity.

[LoZoccolo]

110. Ha ha wait a second...

...so all these people here assume that he's doing Pascal's wager, as if it would be pretty likely that he would believe in an afterlife, enough to assume something about his inner motives, and then when you read the article, it's dishonest to put the word "still" there? I would think that if all these people assumed he thought so, it would be surprising enough when you found out that he didn't to put the word "still" in the sentence.

[Cheswick2.0]

112. or maybe he finally grew up

and decided to stop stomping his foot and refusing to believe in a God because his life wasn't perfect.

[depakid]

75. Pascal's wager become much more attractive

once you're an octagenarian!

seriously, though, I think his current views on the subject probably mirror my own....

[daleo]

80. I wonder how many people here have actually read Anthony Flew

It has been a while, but I have read some of his stuff. He is a prolific and notable philosopher of the last half century or so, and very much a rationalist. So, to idly dismiss him as a senile old man, a crackpot, or a scared bettor on Pascal's wager is not really fair to him or the discipline he represents. That doesn't mean the very mild form of theism he is saying he has come around to is correct; just that he and his opinions deserve some respect.

[truthpusher]

84. Here's a link to some Flew info and biography.

http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/antony_flew/flew-bio.html

[daleo]

93. Thanks, that is a pretty decent c.v.

I seem to recall reading "Does God Exist" and "A New Approach to Psychical Research". I don't know about anyone else, but I suffer from a condition that I once heard (playfully) referred to as "literary amnesia". It is hard to remember everything you have read.

As I say, we may or may not agree with him on any point, but his intellect is very respectable.

[TwilightZone]

82. To paraphrase Bill Cosby,

it seems that he is now an old person who is trying to buy his way into heaven.

[superconnected]

91. let him believe anything he wants to believe

There is a saying, "He not so much didn't believe in God as couldn't stand the guy". I often suspect that is the case with many way-overly religios-attacking athiests.

I don't know if this guy was one, but I do know wether he chooses to believe in anything or not is his business, and good for him for being able to stand up and talk about it no matter what his beliefs are.

[private_ryan]

97. he makes sense

he's not saying God is Jesus who's watching what you do. Essentially he's saying that something was there all the time.

How else can you explain big bang? Where did that infinitely dense, proton size particle come from?

[DrWeird]

100. Not very good logic.

If god created the big bang, who created god?

[private_ryan]

101. maybe he was just there

who knows. I certainly don't. Something was just there...unless you can show me how we get something from nothing.

[lazarus]

121. maybe the universe was just there

Maybe the singularity was "just there". Why go inserting a god into it?

[Stuckinthebush]

209. Why go inserting god into it?

Because we are really just animals not that far removed from our other primate cousins and we need to explain our world. Our brains are just big enough and complex enough to cause us real problems.

The Incas needed gods because they didn't understand how the sun rose and set everyday.

The Celts needed gods because they didn't understand how the seasons and nature worked.

The early Jews needed a god because they had to make sense of who they were and they needed a protector from those that would enslave them.

The Egyptians needed many gods because they could not explain death, life, or nature.

All people need to explain their world, and when they can't because they either don't have enough information or because they haven't developed the correct technology to test their world, then they create supernatural beings that know it all. It's mental protection, really.

Many of the most brilliant minds among us still profess a believe in a god or gods. This partitioning of thoughts may be a survival mechanism, but one thing is certain, people don't like their beliefs challenged. In fact, many get downright violent when this happens.

I've often wondered if the highest form of moral thought comes from those without belief in a deity. It is these people who develop morals not based on law from a deity or fear of punishment, but from a deep desire to live in harmony with the other world inhabitants. Oh, if we could all get there one day.

[shrike]

98. Finally got around to reading the whole article. The atheists on this

board have nothing to worry about. He really hasn't left the club. And he certainly won't be singing "Silent Night" this Christmas.

His books sound interesting. I'll have to get ahold of one of them.

[VegasWolf]

102. An atheist? On this board? Noo! n/t

[LoZoccolo]

115. Come on, you've got to admit...

...among a lot of people here, putting any amount of intelligent design into origins is so anathema and a total :grr: topic. Personally, I care more about what a person thinks about what's going on now, but I posed a question on another thread about how someone's relative said they believe in creationism to some extent, and oh no what should they do about it they were flabbergasted and didn't know what to say, and the question was is this really such a big deal and people just thought it was the seed of FReeperdom or something. I mean they had all sorts of things leading from this.

My dad, after the election, seemed to think about the same thing - that like as soon as you don't believe in evolution your mind could be controlled and that's why we lost the election. I'd like to tell him about my friend from work who's an evangelical Christian creation apologist who's more liberal than I am on tons of issues and voted for Kerry. He was even against the Afganistan war unless we could find proof that bin Laden was there - now how many of us can say we said that (I certainly can't). Fortunately, I don't think my dad is half as assertive as when he's ranting and raving from his exurban shelter (alone - he's separated from his second wife now) as when he's face to face with a situation that requires more nuance and tact.

[truthpusher]

289. It is pointless to an end...

...but it's pretty fun to talk about, right?

[Cheswick2.0]

104. and he stil doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about

no surprise. Once arrogant know it all, always an arrogant know it all. WTF does he know about the Christian God?

[Niche]

106. ... a being...Intelligence and purpose...

sounds like the alien theory

[Merlin]

111. He is right. Those who mock prove their own ignorance.

The problem most still stuck in denial have with this is their inability to separate god from religion.

God, a/k/a the force, a/k/a the creator, etc. is some kind of an entity or entities brilliant beyond imagining. That it exists is undeniable. The unfathomable brilliance and complexity of the universe are well beyond the possiblity of chance. Matter must have an origin.

Logic is the bedrock of all physical and biological existence. Reason is the human capacity to exercise logic in the understanding of the universe via science, biology, etc.

But the bible is still mythology. Jesus was a magnificent human being, but not God. Religion has done some good over the centuries, but a lot of bad. Religion today--trying to coexist in an age of reason and discovery--thrives on fear and superstition.

God is not Religion. God can exist. Religion can still be a lot of hooey.

[lazarus]

120. Umm. a few comments

"God, a/k/a the force, a/k/a the creator, etc. is some kind of an entity or entities brilliant beyond imagining."

Or not. Who knows?

"That it exists is undeniable."

Not really. I deny it. There, now we're even. Next comes evidence. Since you're positing the existence of this force/god/creator/First Cause, go right ahead.

"The unfathomable brilliance and complexity of the universe are well beyond the possiblity of chance."

Nope. Argument from design, been debunked long, long ago. Care for a link?

"Matter must have an origin."

Who says? You? Then doesn't this God/force/creator, etc., also require an origin? Where/what is the First Cause?

Why can't people just be happy with an infinite universe, instead of feeling the need to go about inserting gods into it? Why can't it just be turtles all the way down?

[Merlin]

137. Lazarus! Come out from thy cave! I command thee!

I command thee! Okay then, don't. See if I care. :-)

You are recycling old arguments instead of actually thinking anew.

If you toss off all the religious stuff about "god", judging correctly that such tripe is the product of the human propensity to believe (on the part of some) and control those who believe (on the part of others), your mind will be clear to think objectively about the legitimate question of whether or not there is some genuine creative force behind what you see all around you.

To say there is a first cause is not to also say it demands to be worshipped or it inetervenes in our daily lives or it is all good and all holy or it wrote the bible or it sent its "only begotten son" to satisfy its own malignant demands for blood expiation of some obscure "sin." It is simply to say there is a very exciting and intriguing rationale to the universe, after all.

To say first cause or "design" arguments were "debunked long, long ago" is to hide in the intellectual cave of those who would deny the law of entropy, or--if you are one who argues this is not a "closed system" hence Newton doesn't apply--the law of common sense: order NEVER arises from disorder EXCEPT via the intercession of an intelligent operator with sufficient power to implement the ordering.

If that were not the case, computers--or, hell, clothes pins--would have miraculously created themselves "long, long ago."

This Flew guy--need I remind you--was one of the sources for the denial "logic" that claims physical objects and forces and systems may arise from out of the void spontaneously.

I find it amusing that otherwise brilliant intellects--particularly those in the sciences--will actually deny the rational conclusion of causality in this one case alone. Kind of like Warren Commission believers.

To say a cause does not exist behind creation because we can't envision what may have caused the cause is--when put plainly--plainly an excuse for rejecting the obvious.

Again I urge you to suspend disbelief and consider if your own visceral objection to the idea of a first cause is not primarily due to your own justifiable, great revulsion against organized religious, mankind's ignorance, and the inclination of fools.

Turtles! Why did it have to be turtles!

[jwcomer]

217. we all recycle arguments.

Attacking the arguments as recycled is a bit ad hominem don't you think. If we couldn't recycle arguments, or thoughts, or art, or whatever, life would be very dull and silent.

Your understanding of the "law of entropy" is flawed:

Firstly, there is no 'law of entropy'. There are laws of thermodynamics but these are not proven, they are axioms. We choose these axioms because they seem to describe the world we live in fairly well, but it doesn't make them immutable. After all, the Law of Gravity is a gross simplification of what we now understand, but we still call it the law of gravity. All three laws are known to be violated in closed systems. It turns out that energy isn't conserved; so we changed it to mass-energy; but it turns out that that isn't conserved either due to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. The second law, the one about entropy isn't always true either, special exceptions have been known for decades but none are known to exist in earth like situations so it isn't relevant to us (there are some interesting papers that came out a year ago about the possibility of building a semiconductor based maxwell demon, last I checked it had not been refuted but the technology isn't quite there yet for fabrication of such a device.) The third law also doesn't hold, it says you cannot get to absolute zero, which is basically true, but you can scoot right on past it to negative Kelvin temperatures; that's a violation in my book.

Secondly, the laws of thermodynamics are completely irrelevant. No one is suggesting that the universe has less entropy today than when it started. Global entropy can increase while local entropy decreases. Local systems aren't closed after all.

Thirdly, entropy is not complexity. For example, the sun has enormous entropy, yet its macroscopic behavior is fairly simple. The 'law of entropy' should not be thought of as a 'law of complexity'.

-Walton

[lazarus]

262. Since some of your arguments

have been answered, I'll answer the major one:

"Again I urge you to suspend disbelief and consider if your own visceral objection to the idea of a first cause is not primarily due to your own justifiable, great revulsion against organized religious, mankind's ignorance, and the inclination of fools."

It has nothing to do with my "visceral objections" or disbelief; it has everything to do with logic. Have you not read David Hume?

Causality is suspect in the first place.

I don't care if the First Cause is Jehovah, Ahurah-Mazda, or the Great Arkleseizure. I only care that there is no valid argument for a First Cause.

If there is, I'd love to hear it. Otherwise, you're just needlessly multiplying entities. The same argument that calls for a First Cause will, by necessity, call for something to have caused that First Cause, catching the whole thing in a contradiction.

So: Why must there be a First Cause? Why couldn't it be turtles all the way down?

(I like the turtle thing because it's from an old story I heard long ago. It's how I got my daughter to understand that infinity goes both ways.)

"To say a cause does not exist behind creation because we can't envision what may have caused the cause is--when put plainly--plainly an excuse for rejecting the obvious."

That's true, and it's a lovely strawman you've built there, but that's not even close to what I said, or what I mean. A First Cause may be obvious to you, but it's not obvious to others.

There is no logical basis for a First Cause, only an emotional one.

[Raster]

113. he must be dying and worried his miserable little life has no worth.

That's usually about the time someone gets religion in some sort or fashion. And besides, who gives a shit what he believes anyway?

Consider the odds that humanity as we know it will survive another thousand years. Not very good. And with the demise of humanity comes the demise of a pantheon of gods and goddesses that their followers just knew were the real deal. Consider that gods and goddesses from 2000 years ago that humanity believed existed. A little hard pressed to find a follower of zeus or an acolyte of mithras.

[shrike]

176. He hasn't gotten religion

Read the article.

[greenohio]

116. We have a well known athiest who now prescribes to intelligent design.

His basis is science. Fascinating.

[Merlin]

139. He does NOT "prescribe" to intelligent design. Or subscribe either.

He says his view is SIMILAR to the intelligent design thesis. But obviously he does not subscribe to ID's ludicrous assertion that ID therefore both disproves evolution and proves creation nonsense.

It's not a black and white world. Stuff is complicated. You've really got to think about it to understand it.

[Occulus]

118. Begging his and every other believer's pardon, but

I think it could have been the many worlds theory in action:

http://www.hedweb.com/manworld.htm

(Stephen Hawking and two Nobel Laureates agree with this theory. That would lend this a good deal of weight.)

This is a terribly interesting theory. It's a concept so huge, only God could fully understand......

Hey, wait.... :think:

edit: so, assuming this may be true, our own Universe's "Big Bang" could have been an event branching off from another Universe's "Big Crunch" (that Universe could have just enough mass, perhaps), another possibility (in that Universe) being that that "other" Universe remained a singularity forever....

Ours, however, was born.

:smoke:

[currentsupply]

123. this scientist's ego so big

He has convinced himself that since during his lifetime, since he didn't have the brain power to explain the origin of the entire universe, well then naturally, nobody could do it. So god must exist! What a Loser!

[PATRICK]

135. As a Christian I also am amused

about the self importance of an acclaimed atheist doing almost a Zell Miller twist on science. The studies he has done have been around a long time although they boil down to Thomas of Aquinas' circular proofs of the existence of God minus the quality of faith. The universe, as seen through intelligent eyes can look suspiciously organic and fated for a supposedly random mathematical flux. Then down the path to the individual Creator he draws up short and scoffs at the Oriental potentate of those lesser religionists- the non-scientists.

Yeah, more ego than faith here and faith isn't what is about it seems. Safely at arms length from his potentate judgment, the safely deistic watchmaker God of the Eighteenth Century is graciously allowed to emerge with the usual restrictions.

No single focused intelligence can handle the universe. The God of humans IS one focused and involved with the microcosm, the only way God is relevant or understood. The scientist still is uncomfortable with a relevant God and the threat of intimacy. The trouble with the overgod is that science is still laughably short-sided in its cosmic knowledge and one race perspective.

A conversion to the logic of a god of the universe is not quite moving. It's been done- without fanfare self-aggrandizement "it's important because I believe it to be so and not more or less". I would be more impressed if he would espouse Jefferson's zeal for democracy and DO something about it to preserve science for the advancement and salvation of the race in the face of tyrannical ignorance and abused "religion". (Is he looking for funding and speaking opportunities?)

[Merlin]

144. A god must be personal to be "relevant"?

Lots of big words and convoluted sentences, but way short on logic. Oh, I know, logic is unimportant since we have faith. :eyes:

Your post proves you have no idea what you really think. You find it impossible to reconcile the fact that there may indeed be an intelligent, powerful "god" after all--but that "it" is NOT the malicious, vengeful, racist god of Abraham or oddly dichotomous god of "Christ." "It" is instead the god or reason, intelligence, harmony, beauty, brilliance, order, logic and life. Is that not wondrous enough for you? Do you still really need all the mythology?

[PATRICK]

150. Apparently

everyone needs some humanized version of deity since most of those qualities are decidedly from a human bias. For me, I do not characterize my beliefs as mythology in the sense of fakery. Do I need what I have? interesting question. However, the god of beautiful feelings doesn't quite cut the whole Christian range that involve full engagement in the present sorry situation. Sorry for the big words.(What is a "dichotomous" god?) I haven't had enough sleep and it's as bad as being drunk or deluded.

Abrahan's God, I think was a vast improvement over the average deity of the time. At any rate the editing of the legend is very complex. The relationship between Abraham and his God is uniquely personal and merciful and provident. But if you see the Judeao-Christian God in a that negative way, any real God would certainly not want you to accept that.

Philosophically I have to wonder about an "intelligent" God modeled abstractly on anything limited to a supercomputer or human skull. A super being is an uncomfortable multiplication of any old intelligent creature and not really The God. I would hate to fall under the domination of a limited entity like that. Atheism would be preferable probably.

I share your wrath, but you'll find far odder believers who share your fundamental values if you look around.

[Merlin]

168. Again I say, it's PHYSICS! He's not "abstractly" modeling. He's deducing.

There's a huge difference. Logic and reason are the eminent propensities that enable humans to understand and tame the forces of the world around us. Logic and reason are the faculties this scientist employed to conclude the undeniability that a thing more powerful and intelligent than humans does indeed exist in the universe.

By "oddly dichotomous god of 'Christ'" I mean a God Who Christianity claims was loving, personal, all knowing, all powerful, all good and forgiving, yet somehow demanded that His beloved "only begotten Son" must die a horrible death in order to "redeem" mankind from some horrible "sin" that it was "guilty" of. By who's rules was such expiation necessary? Why, by God's very own rules, of course. But that sure doesn't sound like a loving, personal, all knowing, all powerful, all good and forgiving God, now, does it?

Such a god is odd beyond belief, quite literally. He has a split personality.

[shrike]

177. Interesting point

I think you and I are the only ones on this thread who've read the story.

I am a believer and a churchgoer who finds civil discussions about religion fascinating. I find other people's points-of-view, such as yours, thought-provoking.

[Merlin]

182. Many thanks. I agree.

There are few subjects more interesting than this. Oh well, there's always politics, I guess. :-)

[truthpusher]

290. It's the people who have the split personality...

...that's why I believe nothing anybody tells me as to who/what God is. So far God to me is a string of unexplainable profound experiences that I have had in my life. I would find it very trying indeed to explain these experiences to people. If a religion were to be based on my experiences the way the Christians have based a religion on Jesus' experiences, It would be fucked up beyond belief. It is the Religion that corrupts. Religion has Nothing to do with God.

[shrike]

302. Interesting viewpoint

Lord, what a thread you started. I check back every now and then and it grows like Topsy.

[Merlin]

143. The real "loser" is somebody who thinks he/she is smarter than this guy.

Read the fucking article. He's talking carefully deduced physics. Not superstitions. And not knee-jerk smart alec comments either.

[lazarus]

264. No, he's talking statistics

He just doesn't think the odds are there. That's his opinion, and he's welcome to it, but it doesn't mean he's right.

Here's the relevant quote:

"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?" "

I say there's a 100% chance that life would arise in this universe, because it has. It's that simple. People need to study some statistics and understand what probability really means.

Another quote from him:

"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.

Well, that's nice. But others aren't having that same difficulty. So he thinks because he can't conceive of a naturalistic theory of evolution it must not be possible?

Talk about ego. He can't figure it out, so he's claiming god did it. Nice, convenient, and with no basis in reality. It's unfalsifiable, for one thing. And it needlessly adds a new element into things.

Why not just claim its some new element called "handwavium" and leave it at that?

Claiming that things are too complex to have 'just happened' is nothing but the argument by design. It's a shame that a man with his track record of analytical thought would fall prey to it, but these things happen.

[Merlin]

268. It's really not "that simple." And it's more than just life.

"I say there's a 100% chance that life would arise in this universe, because it has. It's that simple."

The odds of hitting 10 home runs in a row off Nolan Ryan in his prime were statistically insignificant.

How much more statistically insignificant is the possiblity that mere happenstance could produce the complexity of a single, simple leaf, let alone the entire human genome, let alone the human being, let alone all other life forces, let alone the entire, rythmic, harmonious cosmology?

Pretty slim, I'd say. You're off by about, oh, 100%.

[lazarus]

332. Based on what?

What's your statistical sample size?

We have a sample size of one. One universe. In which life arose. That's 100%.

If you had multiple universes, and in the vast majority life never arose, then you'd be able to say life is statistically improbable. But a sample size of one?

It's simple.

And besides, if the cosmology is too complex to exist without some intelligence forming it, a First Cause, then wouldn't that First Cause also be complex? And therefore require its own creator?

Turtles all the way down, man. Turtles all the way down.

[currentsupply]

122. Religion is the most egotistical nonsense ever!

You can have all the morals you want, but to believe that you are connected to the supernatural is plain insane!

[Merlin]

142. This is NOT Religion, damn it! It's physics.

Religion is not the same thing as a first cause (a/k/a "god").

You're just confusing yourself by thinking within the box created for you by our culture--the box of organized religion.

Religion is surely nonsense and mythology. It's all about controlling people.

To believe--as you claim to--that there is no greater intelligence behind the universe than that of humans--THAT is what is insane. Good grief, look around you. Do you think everything you see was created by people? Do you think it just spontaneously created itself out of the void?

THINK!

[VegasWolf]

198. So, do you believe that some giant "Intelligence" just poofed it into

existence?

[Merlin]

263. Existence is a bit more complicated than you seem to think.

Do you actually believe that the highest form of intelligence in the universe is the human being?

Don't you ever wonder how the incredible complexity of the human genome or the stars and planets or the biology of a leaf came into being? Do you think it just happened by coincidence? It just came about spontaneously of its own free will out of the void?

It is undeniable that a force far more powerful and intelligent than we can fathom was behind creation. Does that prove the mythological tales (there are more than one) of creation in the bible? Of course not.

All it proves is that there is an awesomely powerful force out there and we have absolutely no idea what it is, but we are able to see the evidence of its power and--more importantly--evidence of its thinking. And, happily, it turns out it thinks logically and designs logically, and logic is something we humans can understand.

So while we can't envision or comprehend the nature of this force, we can actually understand how it thinks through science. It is genuinely, truly awe inspiring. And it has nothing whatsoever to do with religion as we know it.

[lazarus]

266. Yep

And it's obvious that the gods are causing lightning bolts and thunder, because we don't understand how they work.

Oh, wait, we figured that out, didn't we?

[VegasWolf]

305. Nah, we are only the highest form that I know about.

"It is undeniable that a force far more powerful and intelligent than we can fathom was behind creation." That is just an opinion,
your opinion, not a fact.

Just because you do not understand something implies nothing
with regard to its existence.

[Merlin]

313. You don't understand what their saying.

Flew, Einstein, Hawkings, Voltaire, Jefferson, Franklin, Aristotle and others do not base their beliefs on their inability to understand. The base their beliefs upon logical deduction; on reasoning--a great gift which enables us--through science--to peer into the brilliant mind of whatever it was that created this infinitely complex and beautifully harmonious universe.

[VegasWolf]

317. Nonsense! You really need to bone up on science. Logical

deduction only works so far. Socrates proved that
you can't represent real world knowledge with logic.
No wonder you believe in some god, your rationalizations
seem half baked. Do you seriously think that you
are the first person trying to separate god from religion.
Go back to school for awhile and read some philosophy.

[Merlin]

318. "you can't represent real world knowledge with logic"

Tell it to Einstein. Tell it to Aristotle. Since Socrates wrote nothing, we have only Plato, his pupil to rely upon. To Plato, Aristotle's teacher--as to Aristotle--logic and reason were everything.

Do I "seriously think (I) am the first person trying to separate god from religion." Gee, no. Where the fuck did you get that idea? There is, after all, nothing new under the sun. I'm not the first. But I'm pretty good at it.

You know, for such a blowhard, you're really not very enlightened at all.

Buy bye.

[truthpusher]

319. Maybe Science is just the art of asking God questions...

...and getting the occasional answer.

I don't know, I thought it sounded good :P

[Tight_rope]

126. My guess is that he knows he is soon to die and wants to get into heaven!

:shrug:

[Merlin]

145. My guess is that he's smarter than you are.

:spank:

[Mike Niendorff]

127. In other news:

A former right-wing "Christian" fundamentalist (me) now sees his "former faith" as a mountain of lies, built on a foundation of fear, being peddled by an army of con artists, Pharisees and warmongers.

Film at eleven.


MDN

[essarhaddon]

129. Atheists are wrong...

...and so are Deists. There's no evidence whatsoever that God exists. There's no evidence whatsoever that God's existence is unfeasible. The rational thing to do is being Agnostic. Now not many people can live with uncertainty, so they surrender reason to faith. The question is, then, how far their irrationality will go in each case. The least irrational ones will believe in a non-personal, abstract God, independent from all organized religions, while the ragingly irrational ones will believe in anthropomorphic Gods, capable of human emotions, and they will even believe in prophets, saviours, priests, and whatever these prophets, saviours, or priests say. Just my opinion. I could be wrong.

[PATRICK]

136. Better a positive view of belief

and knowledge. Defining oneself by what does NOT believe seems a little self-demeaning. The Dems seem forced to go through this all the time by the way. Open-minded and rational with a heart is a good start AND acknowledgment that one does ultimately develop a set of personal beliefs and judgments that often suspiciously line up ethically on one side or the other with those of an ethical religious faith.

Since the ethical religions belief in behavior and the heart as the witness of real faith, the formalities of that extra step of a personal creed accepting a particular religious creed is not as critical as what happens when someone seems to accept the belief system and monstrously twists it. It has taken a lot of pain to accept that wisdom. The importance obviously and experientially is not the God you don't see and how loud your hosannas are but your parallel relationship with the people you do see. We all lack something. Boxing imperfection does not improve anyone. Openness is requisite for all human beings.

Agnosticism as a term seems still a bitter defense against those who deny the wisdom of openness and compassion. At least they are headed the right way, the first step: denying false gods and people who would be better than God.

[VegasWolf]

200. Sorry, not so...

"Defining oneself by what does NOT believe seems a little self-demeaning ..." Well, I don't believe in Santa Claus or little
green men and don't feel in the slightest demeaned. As a
person who was raised and early-educated in a Catholic system,
I find that the lack of contradictions to be highly refreshing.

"rational with a heart" is not the sole prerogative of believers.
Having a heart tis a human emotion. You do not need to believe in
order to care for one's brothers.

[Merlin]

146. Yup. Those who believe in "who knows" are much smarter. NOT!

What you have espoused is nothing more than a cop out. You are afraid to really think because you may have to reach a conclusion that would make you actually believe in something.

This guy's "god" and the "god" of deists is NOT the product of people who "believe in a non-personal, abstract God." You are just completely missing the point.

It is not a "belief" at all. It is a rational conclusion. It is not a mythos. It is physics. He does not have a "religion," he has drawn a conclusion about reality.

What is truly irrational is the mind of one who looks around at all the wonders of the universe that surrounds him/herself and then proclaims he/she doesn't really know if anything caused it. Reminds me of the two hand puppets: one says to the other "I wonder if there really IS a hand."

[PATRICK]

155. I did read the article which also

was not overly friendly to Flew and charted his life and stands in a way as to explain his philosophical journey. Probably it would be very much better to read the original Flew and not a news article which causes the usual easy comments.

The God of Design seems very much more alluring and less in a humanly ordered way reflecting our times as much as our advanced knowledge. It is curious that unnamed atheists at the end of the article console themselves that this new deity of Flew's is a "minimal" god who does not inflict the afterlife. True to his upbringing Flew is intensely interested in the question of truth and belief. I do apologize for sniping. Truth makes monkeys of us all.

People who question a god defined narrowly by other people cover quite a large range of thought. Supposedly God can be pointed toward but by definition impossible for any person to define or box. Faith is another set of inflammatory issues. Why the furor over an intellectual discussion? Isn't this a main symptom of the problem with the topic?

[Merlin]

180. "Faith" is a very curious thing.

It is a concoction of Judeo-Christian religious tradition. Notice it does not the same as "Belief" which means having a solid notion about something based upon our human capacity for reason and common sense. "Faith" means taking an assertion on no evidence whatsoever and "believing" it to be true.

"Faith" is a requirement when asserting that the mythology of the bible is literally true.

For example, the God of the OT gives the land of present day Israel to the descendants of Abraham/Isaac/Jacob for all eternity. Of course, that's just plain bullshit. What do we have to prove it? Some ancient tribal tales told around campfires for generations until written down 3,500 years ago by people whose understanding of the world was positively primitive in comparison to our own. Yet that primitive mythology is supposed to trump all we know and now believe about rightful ownership, justice, fair play, and human decency. Why? "Faith!"

Then there's the God of the NT. His "Son" Jesus tells us many good and wise things about how we should live. But those things are promptly diminished in significance by those who have created a mythological legend around his memory. Instead of following the wise counsel of Jesus, we are supposed to believe in the Godhood of "Christ." Why? Not because of what Jesus really said. But because he was made into "Christ" after his death by those intent on forming a new personality cult religion. What proof is there that Jesus is "the Christ" and "God?" None. Just "Faith."

Further, these folks say that never mind how you live your life, it is this "Faith" -- this belief in things unimportant (Jesus is God -- what difference does that make?), rather than fidelity to his teachings -- that becomes the most important thing to Christians.

How incredibly primitive we humans remain!

[essarhaddon]

156. What a rude and arrogant reply

1) I never said Agnostics are smarter, but after reading your claim that God "is physics" I just might begin to think I'm smarter than you.

2) Assuming that Agnostics are "afraid to really think because you may have to reach a conclusion that would make you actually believe in something" is condescending, and a poor argument. I could say, for instance, that you believe in God because you're afraid that your life would have no meaning without a God.

3) You say "What is truly irrational is the mind of one who looks around at all the wonders of the universe that surrounds him/herself and then proclaims he/she doesn't really know if anything caused it." So, must I understand you know what caused the universe? Please, write a book and share it with the human kind. Or better, learn some humility and accept the fact that perhaps we cannot have all the answers.

4) You say I reminded you of some puppets. I felt tempted to write what your post reminded me of, but my education prevented me to do so.

[Merlin]

175. Rude? Arrogant? Check your own post first!

Before you accuse me of such, read your own damn original post. Here are a few choice morsels:
"Atheists are wrong... and so are Deists."
"...not many people can live with uncertainty, so they surrender reason to faith... (and) irrationality..."

What do you call that? Gentle kindness? And who cares? If you can't take it don't dish it out.

Let's take your points one by one:

1) Never said "Agnostics are smarter..." (btw, what's with capitalizing "A"gnostics?)
No? Really? Maybe not explicitly. But what else should we deduce from this:
"There's no evidence whatsoever that God's existence is unfeasible. The rational thing to do is being Agnostic." In other words, an eminent physicist draws a long pondered rational conclusion to a problem of physics and you have the incredible temerity to say it's based on "no evidence whatsoever."

2) Agreed.

3) You ask "must I understand you know what caused the universe?" No, you must not. Why? Because I have the humility to admit I don't have all the answers. So does Dr. Flew. So did Einstein. So did Jefferson and all the other deists. The only answer we do have is that the unfathomable order, complexity, vastness, and systemic rationality of the universe around us prove there is something more intelligent and more powerful than humans.

I suspect my post upsets you because you have no worthy answers to the points I make. This is true not because I am so brilliant. It's true because you appear to have given up on your own ability to reason. Too bad. You seem like an otherwise intelligent person.

[essarhaddon]

203. your points? what points?

1)"I suspect my post upsets you because you have no worthy answers to the points I make." Don't flatter yourself. After reading your two condescending replies you make just one single point: that the complexity of the universe proves that God exist. Well, I beg to differ, and the fact that many scientists, who obviously are aware of that complexity, don't see it as a valid or sufficient evidence, should be enough to consider your "argument" insufficient. Google for "anthropic argument" and see how controversial and criticized your (single) point is.

2) Why do I capitalize Agnostic? Well, I think that Agnostics and Atheists deserve the same privilege Christians have (and Deists, for that matter).

3) And yes, I called Deists irrational. They are. Believing that the complexity of the universe proves God's existence is irrational, since there's no logical connexion between the premise and the conclusion.

You know, no matter how hard you try, your position is the weak one here, and it will always be, because since you affirm that God exists, it's you who have the onus of proving it, and proving it irrefutably. If you do, I'll stand corrected, but to be blunt, I just doubt you can grasp the subtleties of a philosophical discussion.

[Merlin]

216. Ha! Anthropic argument! Gosh, you've just done me in!

Yeah, you know every time I think about the question of the existence of something in the universe that's superior to humans, I always google for "anthropic argument." :bounce:

Meanwhile, you prove you still have no worthy answer to the points I make except to deny them and say there are others who believe things as foolish as the things you believe. Hey, by that standard, I'd still be a practicing Catholic!

So you truly believe no logical connection can be made between complexity and the need for an intelligent force behind it? Try googling Law of Entropy.

Btw, now you're upcasing "G"od. I don't even do that. And I believe it exists. I just don't believe it insists we must worship it. It couldn't give a rat's ass what we do.

[essarhaddon]

237. You can have the last word

I suspect you're the kind of person who likes to. I don't care. From now on I'm ignoring all your posts, please reciprocate.

[dummy-du1]

241. Irrationalism?

Well, I don't know Mr. Flew, but according to the article he has written a book "The Presumption of Atheism", that stated that "the debate about god has to begin by presuming atheism, putting the burden of proof on those arguing that God exists". His change of mind could only have two reasons:
1) he did retract the book, pointed out his errors and stated the arguments for the arrival at the opposite conclusion,
2) the proof of god has finally been found.

Well, I don't know about 1), but I am quite sure that I wouldn't have missed the the proof of god in the science magazines, if it had occurred. I guess it would even have been reported on Fox News 24/7, wouldn't it? So, if this article is true, perhaps Mr. Flew just abandoned rationalism, that would be the most obvious explanation for his change of mind. Nothing wrong with that - irrationalism can be a lot of fun.

[Stuckinthebush]

169. I guess what you are saying is...

true believers are true believers regardless of philosophy, and since no one can have all the answers, they both must be wrong.

[essarhaddon]

183. Not exactly

An Agnostic doesn't say Atheists or Deists are wrong (or right), because that would imply Agnostics know if God exists or not. An Agnostic simply points out that neither the Atheist or the Deist have irrefutable arguments, and (this is the key) he is able to live with that. An Agnostic needs no God to live, but, unlike an Atheist, an Agnostic doesn't deny the possibility that there might be a God after all.

Naturally, even Agnostics have to make moral decisions, and when that happens, the theoretically Agnostic must be either practically Atheist or practically Deist. To explain this I'll put an example: an Agnostic soldier is on the battlefield, and facing a probable death, he must choose if he prays to God or not. He doesn't know if God exists, so, should he pray just in case? or, should he consider that God will do the right thing regardless of prayers? or, should he just be practically Atheist and discard God as a solution?

As you can see, you can think Agnostic, but you must act either Atheist or Deist. The difference between them is only that Agnostics know they could be wrong, while Atheists and Deists are sure they're right.

[dummy-du1]

186. Agnostics are atheists without the balls to admit it n/t

[Stuckinthebush]

199. Not true at all

Agnostics can be the farthest thing from an atheist.

Many agnostics consider atheists to be as rigid in their beliefs as fundamentalist Christians.

An agnostic truly believes that there is no way on God's green earth (hehe) that we can know what the hell started the universe (if anything), or what happens after death (if anything). They take the position that if there is no way to know then drop the whole thing and figure out how to live life here and now.

Atheists, on the other hand, fervently believe that there is no god or gods controlling the universe. An agnostic would never say that because an agnostic doesn't know and doesn't think you can know.

So, why would an agnostic ever move to one camp or the other? They wouldn't because that would be abandoning their base philosophy that states, "You can't know - so drop it, damn it!"

[dummy-du1]

202. I don't think so

Atheists, on the other hand, fervently believe that there is no god or gods controlling the universe. An agnostic would never say that because an agnostic doesn't know and doesn't think you can know.


Really? Well, it's easy to believe in a lot of stupid things, easter bunnies, tooth fairies or pink elephants that only exist behind your back if you don't look. Are agnostics as cautious to state that they cannot know that those entities exist? I doubt it. The usual approach
to take concerning things for whose existence no sufficient evidence can be provided, is to simply state that they don't exist. I don't see a reason to treat god any different than the pink elephants in this regard.

[Stuckinthebush]

214. By definition

If an agnostic were to say that gods or god does not exist, then she would be an atheist. If people were to label the thing that created our universe as "Pink Elephant", then the atheist would say that there is no way to know if Pink Elephants exist or not. It is not the name of the object, but the function of the object.

We use the name "god" to denote some supernatural being that may or may not have directed will, but does have the power to create the universe and maintain it. Call it what you will, but agnostics don't think that one can ever know if such an entity exists. An atheist will tell you it definitely does not exist. As to evidence, an agnostic will acknowledge evidence for and against a god or gods. They will say to the deist, "You do have valid points, and an explanation can be a god-type force." and to the atheist, "You do have valid points, since solid scientific evidence can not be produced, one can come to the reasonable conclusion that a god or gods do not exist." I have yet to see anybody make valid arguments for the existence of pink elephants. If valid arguments were made, and flimsy evidence was produced, and the entirety of the wold felt that pink elephants were the driving force in the universe...then the agnostic would shrug his shoulders and say, "Who knows? We can't test it further. Let's live here and now."

[dummy-du1]

228. I have heard this before

Why does the universe require to be created or maintained at all? It's like pretending that the easter bunny is required to put the easter eggs in the basket, but we cannot know if it does or doesn't exist. It's kind of silly to attribute a function that cannot be observed in nature to a being and then wonder if this being really exists.

Theists don't have valid points, and a god-type force cannot be an explanation in a scientific sense, exactly because everything and its opposite can be explained by it. Atheists take the scientific approach to answer this question, that includes applying Occam's Razor
to the question. If there is no need to introduce an entity to explain something, just don't do it. Actually, it's even worse: trying to introduce a god-type force to explain the universe is the same as saying: from now on we don't do science anymore.

There is a logical difference between proposing a thing exists and proposing a thing doesn't exist. To propose a thing doesn't exist cannot be proven (because it's not feasible to examine all things), but easily disproven. One formulation of the second law of thermodynamic is for example, "A perpetuum mobile does not exist." It cannot be proven, but you can derive that this object x is not a perpetuum mobile for every object x. That's the empirical value of scientific laws, you can derive what things are. If you find an object x that is a perpetuum mobile, that would falsify this law. That's the moment were we should try finding a better law.

So logic requires theists to find the object x that is the creator of the universe, not atheists to prove that it doesn't exist, which wouldn't be feasible anyway. It's of course difficult to do that for theists, but that's their own fault. If you construct a creator with so many mighty properties as our theists, you can never find him because he can hide forever if he chooses to. That's probably why Nietzsche referred to god, as the "unknown god", because that's his essence - he cannot be known.

Agnostics pretend to not see this difference, but that doesn't make it go away. So perhaps I should rephrase my original statement, "agnostics are theists - without the balls to admit it." As if it would matter, the constant is, that they don't have balls. ;)

[Beetwasher]

141. An 81 Year Old Facing His Own Mortality

Has a good reason to find god...When death is around the corner, I'm sure it's comforting...

[shrike]

151. He doesn't believe in an afterlife

Why would it be comforting?

[Beetwasher]

154. Because It's An Easy Answer

To how the universe supposedly came into existence. Easy answers=comfort. He's at the end of his life and now thinks he knows the answer to an important question. He can stop thinking about it now.

[shrike]

157. If he wanted to be comfortable he'd have kept his mouth shut

His fellow atheists, including those on this board, aren't taking this too well.

[Beetwasher]

160. Huh? That's Ridiculous

I'm an atheist and I could care less. I've never even heard of this guy. Psychological comfort is important at that age. Why would he care what others think of him and why should an any atheist care what this guy thinks?

[shrike]

161. Well, you've responded to this thread and to me. You must care

[Beetwasher]

162. I Think It's Intersting, That's All

:shrug:

Why do theists believe this is some sort of victory? That's silly...Some guy changed his opinion, big deal...This is more a comment on the psychology of the elderly than it is on the existence of god...

[shrike]

163. Oh, heavens, it's not a victory

I hope you've read the article, because it's actually quite interesting. It wouldn't surprise me if, by this time next year, he's changed his mind -- if he's still alive then.

The concept of deism interests me because I've done some research and writing on indigenous societies. They are, for the most part, deists, at least in the Far East. They view their "Creator" as a remote being with little to no interest in the affairs of men. If my understanding of Wicca is correct, then the indigenous were also Wiccans of a sort -- they worshiped nature, which they believed was infused with spirits.

It might interest you to know that Einstein was a deist -- of sorts. He was not religious in the least, but according to what I've read, he believed that a God, if one existed, expressed itself in creation and had nothing to do with the affairs of men.

Discover Magazine had an entire issue devoted to Einstein a few months ago. You might want to check it out if you can find it.

[Beetwasher]

165. So What?

I read the article. And with all the crowing by deists, it certainly seems they think this is some sort of victory. It's not. Atheists don't get their marching orders from some priest sect of atheists. I doubt this will change a single other atheists mind.

Why should I care even if Einstein *might* (there is debate on the subject "he believe that god, IF ONE EXISTED...") have believed in god?

Like I said, this is more a comment on the psychology of the elderly than anything to do with god.

[shrike]

174. Well, Einstein was a pretty smart guy

A lot smarter than you or I. One of the more influential people of the 20th century. Yet you don't care what he thinks ... particularly if it doesn't conform to your belief system.

I enjoy learning about what other people think and hearing their ideas, whether or not I agree with them. Evidently you don't.

[Beetwasher]

181. Again, So What?

I care what he says about physics, his thoughts on god are his opinions. Everyone's got 'em. That being said, from everything I've seen, he was agnostic anyway. Obviously, you only read what he's said with your preconceived notions and your belief bias built in, either that, or you need to brush up on your reading comprehension.

I enjoy learning too, yet in all my years I've never seen much original thought on the concept of god. And you've certainly not added anything original, that's for sure. Even your smarmy codescension is nothing new, it's par for the course for a belligerent believer. Get back to me when you've something original or worthwhile to add, otherwise your just blowing smoke. What else is new?

[shrike]

184. Actually, I'm only stating what I've read about Einstein

These are conclusions his biographers drew, not me. As I've said, he was not religious in the least. My reading comprehension is quite good, btw.

If you think I'M belligerent you must have a hard time in this world.

[Beetwasher]

187. I Won't Take Your Word For It

Both on the supposed conclusions you claim his biographers came to and your reading comprehension.

Belligerent is as belligerent does.

[shrike]

191. Ah, a DU p**sing contest

You've certainly answered my question -- you don't get along well in this world, do you?

[Name removed]

195. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

223. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Beetwasher]

225. I Could Care Less

Threatened? LOL! Yes, I'm threatened by pompous morons who can't even admit they made a mistake, or by people with so little confidence in themselves that they grasp at any little bit of validation for their world views they can get their grubby little hands on (like atheists converting, even when they don't)

Honorably and w/ respect? Don't make me laugh. His pomposity was on full display claiming that I MUST care and that obviously I was not interested in learning. Indeed. I'm not interested in learning from idiots, that's for sure. Keep your self righteousness and go pray or something, maybe it'll work this time. :eyes:

[shrike]

298. Honey, I'm a she, not a he

If you're going to diss me, get my gender right.

[shrike]

188. Clarification: agnostic is probably a good term for Einstein

From the sound of things, he was saying that if a God existed, it would more than likely be a "deist" version of a deity. Which is an opinion rather than a belief. Therefore, if one were to put Einstein in a category, agnostic would be the best choice -- I doubt he'd state an absolute in either direction.

[Beetwasher]

190. Ok, But That's Different Than What You've Said

"It might interest you to know that Einstein was a deist -- of sorts."

An agnostic is not a deist, even "of sorts"

[shrike]

297. Yes, of sorts. Meaning that he didn't so much believe as

acknowledge the possibility of a "being," which might qualify him as an agnostic.

Boy, and you try and be nice around here ...

[Merlin]

224. Actually, Einstein believed there must be creator.

"I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals Himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings." - Einstein (New York Times, 25 April 1929, p. 60, col. 4)

Also:

1954:

"I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."

1927:

"I cannot conceive of a personal God who would directly influence the actions of individuals, or would directly sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation. I cannot do this in spite of the fact that mechanistic causality has, to a certain extent, been placed in doubt by modern science. My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance-but for us, not for God."


1939:

"I do not believe that the basic ideas of the theory of relativity can lay claim to a relationship with the religious sphere that is different from that of scientific knowledge in general. I see this connection in the fact that profound interrelationships in the objective world can be comprehended through simple logical concepts. To be sure, in the theory of relativity this is the case in particularly full measure. The religious feeling engendered by experiencing the logical comprehensibility of profound interrelations is of a somewhat different sort from the feeling that one usually calls religious. It is more a feeling of awe at the scheme that is manifested in the material universe. It does not lead us to take the step of fashioning a god-like being in our own image-a personage who makes demands of us and who takes an interest in us as individuals. There is in this neither a will nor a goal, nor a must, but only sheer being. For this reason, people of our type see in morality a purely human matter, albeit the most important in the human sphere. "

http://www.stcloudstate.edu/~lesikar/einstein/personal.html

[Beetwasher]

226. Oh? Where Does It Say That In Any Of Those Quotes?

Nowhere. Not in a single one of those quotes does it say he believes there MUST be a creator. What a load of crap. You infer it because that is what YOU believe. That's NOT what Einstein is saying though.

"It is more a feeling of awe at the scheme that is manifested in the material universe. It does not lead us to take the step of fashioning a god-like being in our own image-a personage who makes demands of us and who takes an interest in us as individuals."

If you knew anything about Einstein then you would know he was VERY careful in his discussions about god and he never said he believed there was a creator or even that there MUST be one.

[Merlin]

240. You're wrong. If you knew Spinoza you'd understand what he's saying.

The first one makes it clear, as you can see from researching Spinoza (c.f. below). The others I included to demonstrate that it's quite possible to believe in a "creator" or an intelligent force behind what exists without buying the stuff of traditional religion.

By your logic, the program you're using to type your replies could as well have written itself. But it didn't. It was created by an intelligent being. That being does not know and does not care what you individually are creating with its creation.

If you're capable of grasping that--a big if--then maybe you can begin to understand the notion of a first cause which is not anthropomorphic and is not a personal god and does not involve itself in our daily lives, yet is nonetheless the author of the program of existence--or, as Spinoza postulates--actually is existence.

For more solid evidence of such a proposition, study the human genome and tell me how you think such an extraordinarily brilliant and complex instruction set--for that's truly what it is--just "happened" spontaneously out of the void.


Ethics
by Baruch Spinoza
1677 (originally written in Latin)

(From Part I - Concerning God):

"God, or substance, consisting of infinite attributes, of which each expresses eternal and infinite essentiality, necessarily exists.

Proof.--If this be denied, conceive, if possible, that God does not exist: then his essence does not involve existence. But this (by Prop. vii.) is absurd. Therefore God necessarily exists.

Another proof.--Of everything whatsoever a cause or reason must be assigned, either for its existence, or for its non-existence--e.g., if a triangle exist, a reason or cause must be granted for its existence; if, on the contrary, it does not exist, a cause must also be granted, which prevents it from existing, or annuls its existence. This reason or cause must either be contained in the nature of the thing in question, or be external to it. For instance, the reason for the non-existence of a square circle is indicated in its nature, namely, because it would involve a contradiction. On the other hand, the existence of substance follows also solely from its nature, inasmuch as its nature involves existence."
...
Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.
...

<This is where Spinoza began to get in trouble with the theists of his time:>

Some assert that God, like a man, consists of body and mind, and is susceptible of passions. How far such persons have strayed from the truth... For all who have in anywise reflected on the divine nature deny that God has a body. Of this they find excellent proof in the fact that we understand by body a definite quantity, so long, so broad, so deep, bounded by a certain shape, and it is the height of absurdity to predicate such a thing of God, a being absolutely infinite.


http://www.mtsu.edu/~rbombard/RB/Sylab/Texts/Phil402/spinoza.ethics.html

[Beetwasher]

242. LOL!!! If I Knew Spinoza!!! LOL!

That's funny. Very funny. I think you need to brush up on Spinoza and Einstein's reference to him.

Just because Einstein referenced Spinoza does not mean you can infer that he thought there was a creator being. If you knew anything about Spinoza (apparently you don't except what you googled and misunderstood) or his philosophy, then you would know that Spinoza was not positing a creator God in any classical sense whatsoever if at all. You show a profound ignorance of Spinoza's philosophy if you think otherwise.

[Name removed]

248. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

249. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Name removed]

254. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Merlin]

257. LOL. Your ignorance of the views of Spinoza and Einstein is awesome.

So is your unbelievably convoluted logic. You are utterly dishonest as a converationalist.

Listen to this weaseling lie you posted in response to Einstein's quoted words, "I believe in the god of Spinoza...":

"Just because Einstein referenced Spinoza does not mean you can infer that he thought there was a creator being."

Then, faced with incontrovertible proof of Spinoza's belief in just such a "creator being," you say:

"Spinoza was not positing a creator God in any classical sense whatsoever if at all."

Your clever little wiggle room here is the "in any classical sense" part. Because you know fucking well he posits clearly a belief in a "divine" "god" which is a "creator being."

Spinoza did not argue, nor does Flew, nor did Einstein--nor do I, as you'd know if you'd been paying attention--for a religious god, a god of the bible, a personal god or an anthropomorphic god.

He argued for a god of nature--a creator god, because--in his words--"Of everything whatsoever a cause or reason must be assigned..."

[Beetwasher]

270. Creator Specifies Something, Something Spinoza's Dismisses and You Don't

Obviously. Spinoza's concept of god was radical because it departed from the idea of a creator. Your ignorance is astounding. You are arguing precisely the opposite of what Spinoza was getting at. Wow! Amazing! He's spinning is his grave! LOL!. You are incredibly foolish and uninformed, but keep it up! I've never seen anyone so incredibly off the mark before.

Stop googling Spinoza and stop being lazy and actually learn about him and his philosophy. Take time, read it and then get back to me. It's good stuff actually, but not what you apparently and erroneously think. You are dead wrong. Spinoza's dismisses you as absurd for anthropomorphizing god. When you claim god is a creator, that is precisely what you are doing and it is precisely what Spinoza's was arguing against.

Spinoza presented his arguments in layers of proofs built on top of eachother. You are obviously just googling Spinoza and then selectively cutting and pasting things out of context that you think support your position and it's pathetic. His arguments have to be taken in totality from beginning to end, not piecemeal. You're ad hoc education in Spinoza's is truly comic. But keep it up though, because maybe you'll actually learn something despite your insistence on blind ignorance.

[Misunderestimator]

147. Oh I do like "cosmic Saddam Husseins"

:D

[hatrack]

148. 21st Century version of Pascal's Wager

And, of course, that's Anthony Flew's personal choice and inalienable right.

So what?

[The Stranger]

152. I think it probably pays better.

[amazona]

153. it's the old story

You get old and tired, and you give up your beliefs because you fear death. Sad.

Leave the man in peace to sort out his thoughts would be my gut response. If religion has any value at all, it is to give courage when facing hardship or death. False courage is better than none for many people.

I don't need a super-intelligence to explain why the world is beautiful. If Gods exist, and certain experience I've had suggest they might, they did not create this universe. They are emergent properties, not creators. My experience with the Gods is a bit scary because you come to realize that they are not any smarter than we are, they just have a different outlook because they lack material bodies.

On Edit- any God who proclaims that he created all or is all-powerful I put in the same category as people who pretend to know or do all -- they are just braggarts and need not be paid much attention to. I'll let their followers tend to their swollen egos, I've got other things to do.

[shrike]

158. See above. He doesn't believe in an afterlife.

He also doesn't believe in the kind of God who gives comfort.

Read the article, people.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

194. Neither anything else in the Judeo-CHristian mythology.

All he did was acknowledge as a valid speculation that there may be an entity which triggered this Universe's existence and that might be interpreted as a thinking mind. Hardy a conversion.

The glee of some people here says A LOT.

[Stuckinthebush]

164. It sounds like he came to the conclusion

that we can not explain everything.

His way to deal with it is to shrug his shoulders and call the unexplained "God".

The way I look at my agnosticism is that it is a continual shrugging of the shoulders with complete comfort. Perhaps one day I'll call the unexplained "God" as well.

Or, I might just call it snickerdoodles because it is more fun to say.

[Stunster]

205. Reflections on Flew's new position

I remember reading Flew when I was a philosophy undergraduate. The piece, I think, points up the tremendous difficulty in supposing that our universe, with its specific physical laws, could have come into being by chance.

Consider the idea that you have a huge barrel in front of you, containing 10 million straws of differing lengths. Unless you pull out the shortest one, you will be shot on the spot by an automatic light-sensitive weapon which instantly registers the length of the straw you draw. You pull a straw out, and there's no shooting. You are hugely relieved and amazed to be alive.

Now consider two versions of the same story: a) this is the only drawing that takes place; b) millions of similar drawings are simultaneously taking place all over the world.

If the situation is b, then your relief will still be great, but there's no reason to suppose a conspiracy to save your life----somebody, somewhere had to draw the shortest straw, and it may as well be you. There's no great surprise in that. Indeed, the probability that there would be one survivor of the drawing would be 1. I.e., it's a certainty. But suppose the situation is a. The probability that there would be a survivor of such a drawing is 10 million to 1 against, or 0.0000001. This is a reason not just for surprise, but for believing that the drawing was fixed or designed to ensure your survival. It is far more likely that the drawing was fixed, than that you survived by sheer chance.

Well, if there is only one universe, then the chances of it being so structured as to be capable of evolving human beings are far smaller than 10 million to 1 against, if the structuring occurs by random chance. It is vastly more likely to have been designed that way. Similarly, if you came across a rock in Iran, upon which were marks which, if read as Greek letters, said (when translated into English) "Alexander the Great fought a victorious battle in this place against the forces of the Persian king", it would be irrational to believe that the letters were carved by random erosion, rather than by some ancient Greek.

To deal with this problem, the Multiverse Hypothesis has been proposed. This has the effect of making the situation described above a b-type one. There are, on this hypothesis, untold billions, or possibly an infinity, of 'straw-drawings'---i.e. universe-creations. It is thus certain, or very likely (if you make the number of creations high enough) that one universe will have a physics like ours, and will therefore generate beings like us.

But the Multiverse Hypothesis suffers from the problem that all the other universes are inherently unobservable by us. This immediately violates the scientific method. And so we have the supremely ironic result that a colossally huge number of unobservable entities are posited, while eschewing the scientific method, for the sole 'ad hoc' purpose of denying the existence of *one* unobservable (God). This is perhaps the most egregious violation of Ockham's Razor ever proposed. Furthermore, there is no way of knowing what the random universe-generating mechanism could possibly be like, or of observing it, or of understanding why it should exist at all. It would seem purposeless, utterly devoid of reason, and ridiculously extravagant from an ontological point of view that there should be such a thing. But the same charge can't be levelled against theism, since its ultimate being is supremely endowed with purpose and reason and value (and in classical theism at least, is ontologically simple, timeless, and perfect).

So, it is easy to see why Flew should now feel compelled to admit the existence of an intelligent creator. He does not, however, think that this being is involved in our lives, and prefers to conceive of God deistically, rather than theistically.

But surely there is reason to believe that an *intelligent, rational* creator God *would be* involved with his creatures? Are there any examples of human beings, acting as intelligent, rational creators and designers, *not* being involved with the things they make or design? Hardly any, and if there are such cases, we would be strongly inclined to say that the act of design/creation would be *irrational* in those circumstances. A person who made things for no reason would be considered at best odd, if not insane. A person who made things simply to look at them would be odd. Ah, but what about artists---isn't that what they do? Well, actually, artists make things so that *other people* can look at them. If the artist makes things which only she will look at, it is usually only done in the context of preparing art for the public---practice drawings, first drafts, etc. The ultimate goal is to share the artist's art with others.

Of course, some people make things just for their own amusement. But in such cases, they *interact* in some fashion with the thing they've made---they play with it, or use it in some way, because they derive enjoyment from doing so. But what enjoyment would someone derive from creating a universe, whose most interesting inhabitants one would then choose not to communicate or interact with in any fashion? Why would a rational being go to the trouble of making rational beings, but then not have anything to do with those other rational beings? Even in our own fictional accounts of creating supposedly rational entities like Frankenstein or the 2001 Space Odyssey computer, there is always interaction between the creator and the creature. Sometimes there is even some kind of emotional relationship.

I submit that it would be a lot more natural if a divine creator interacted or communicated somehow with his creatures, and decidedly odd if he did not.

A further consideration is that the universe is not just an arena where scientific physics plays out. It's also a moral arena. Why should that be? Was it just an accident that the intelligent designer god whom Flew now posits made the universe, and then had morality come into the world as an *unforeseen, accidental by-product*. I don't think that's plausible.

All the rational creatures we're familiar with are also moral agents---agents, that is, who are capable in principle of entering into moral relationships. Why would a rational creator not be also a moral agent? And if the creator is a moral agent, that would mean that the creator would have an understanding of moral value. But moral value arises precisely in relationship with other moral agents. Hence, a rational creator who is also a moral agent--as one would expect him to be (and certainly Kant would insist that all rational beings are ipso facto moral beings)---such a creator would know that moral value would arise in the creator's relating meaningfully to the rational moral creatures he has made.

Now of course, one might object that this is all only what we would expect, and reality might be different. But on the hypothesis that there is a rational, intelligent designer/creator of the world, our expectations in this regard are ultimately the result of that creator making the world and us the way the world and we are. Our expectations in this regard would, in short, have been 'put there' by the creator. Why would the creator do such a thing if the expectations were invalid or bore no relation to reality? The only reason a creator would do such a thing would be malicious desire to deceive us.

What is the likelihood that an intelligent, rational creator of the universe would be malicious? Well, on some theories of morality (notably Kant's), to be rational entails being moral. Or to put it another way, immorality is a species of irrationality. But if a Flew-type god is highly or supremely rational, which seems implicit in the notion of being the creator of the whole world, and therefore of all the rational minds within it, then on Kantian grounds we should doubt that the creator is malicious.

Even leaving Kant to one side, there seems to be a contradiction or at least a strong incongruity between Flew's obvious admiration for the extraordinarily intelligent design of life-systems in the universe, and the idea that the being responsible for this design is malicious. For one thing, it seems possible that a being with malevolent creative intentions would have made life-systems much more frustrating or painful than they naturally seem to be. Among sentient creatures, pain is the exception rather than the rule. Normal, healthy sentient beings are satisfied, and the very notion of 'normal health' indicates that the overall nature of the design of life is not malevolent, since it suggests that health, not pain or illness, is the norm. One just needs to look at most kids in a school yard at break-time to see that they are happy to be alive. Why would a malevolent creator not make their lives worse?

It will, of course, be objected that there is a great deal of suffering, pain and disease in the world, not least among children. But is this really and mainly the fault of the way nature is designed? Or is it really and mainly because of human choices? Recent studies, just to take an almost random sample of many, suggest that exposure to benzene is harmful, and that chronic stress is linked to cellular aging:

Benzene Exposure Linked to Blood Changes

Fri Dec 3, 3:22 AM ET
By PAUL RECER, AP Science Writer

WASHINGTON - Blood changes, including a steep decline in disease-fighting white cells, have been found in workers persistently exposed to low levels of benzene, a common industrial chemical known to pose a leukemia risk at high concentrations.

Wed Dec 1, 1:49 AM ET

LOS ANGELES (AFP) - Chronic stress appears to shorten the life of the body's immune cells, and may compromise the body's ability to fight off disease, US researchers said.

....Thus, a good deal of human illness appears to be due to choices which we ourselves make, rather than something necessitated by nature. Of course, if determinism is true, then the creator is causally responsible for our choices. But the truth of determinism is far from being established, and in any case determinism seems incompatible with what we know about nature from quantum mechanics. And if we are responsible for our own choices, then that means we are responsible for our bad choices---both morally bad choices, and ones that are merely imprudent or mistaken.

Furthermore, most sentient beings cling to life. Among humans, most people appear to prefer life to death, and this seems almost universally true of other sentient beings. People in general seem to be glad that they are alive, even grateful. There are exceptions. But that's the point---they're exceptions. A malevolent creator would surely have seen to it that they were not exceptions, but rather the norm. Though why a putatively rational, intelligent creator would purposely create beings whose normal inclination would be towards suicide is itself a question that seems to negate its own premiss.

On the whole therefore, we seem to have little reason to suppose that the rational/intelligent creator god posited by Flew would act from malice. Hence there'd be little reason to suppose that the creator would purposely try to deceive his creatures as regards their expectations. And among our expectations is the expectation that any rational creature is likely also a moral agent who will therefore know that moral value arises in and through choosing to relate and interact as a rational/moral being with other similar beings, if one can. Hence there seems little reason to doubt this expectation (since there seems little reason to suppose that the creator would be a malicious deceiver), and hence we are probably justified in expecting that the creator of the world would choose, if possible, to relate and interact with us.

What evidence is there that the creator has chosen to do so? Well, it strikes me that there is a colossal amount of such evidence, if we consider simply the tremendously widespread phenomenon of religious experience. By that term I include everything from a natural disposition to believe in the existence of a divine being, to special experiences of apparent communication with such a being. The former has been the norm for a long time in most cultures---few cultures or civilizations have been 'naturally' atheistic, or at least naturally disposed to believe that there are no supernatural beings. On the contrary. And the latter type of experience is well attested in the mystical literature of all the world's major religions. At least some of these accounts have more than the ring of truth (in the sense that the mystical writer appears to be telling the truth about what she has felt, seen, or otherwise experienced), and many of them are compelling in other ways too, especially the ones linked to dramatic and impressive moral transformations for the better. Certainly this kind of transformation has long held by the mainstream theorists of the major religions to be a criterion of authenticity with respect to the claimed experiences (other criteria include such things as the experiencer's consistency, known capacity for honesty, integrity, and modesty, lack of interest in profiting financially, general psychological health, etc). Other religious experiences include a not insignificant number of cases of people claiming to have witnessed healing miracles.

And there is of course a very large body of monotheistic literature attesting to religious experience of a transcendent God who desires us to understand the centrality of the moral life, and desires to forgive us for and save us from our moral failures and other bad choices. In short, many people claim to have experienced some kind of interaction with the creator.

Flew would dismiss all this. But it's surely important to see that, a priori, there seems little reason to doubt that a rational, intelligent creator would also be a moral creator and would therefore *desire* moral interaction with those of his creatures who were themselves moral beings. And it's surely important to see that, a posteriori, there is an enormous number of people who claim to have been the recipients of, and to have engaged in, moral interaction with the divine creator of the world.

Since I myself have had two extraordinary experiences of interacting with God, and many ordinary or everday religious experiences (such as feelings of peace in prayer, or being moved by the love of God and neighbor exhibited by others), I find it hard to accept that what seems to be quite likely on a priori grounds---namely, that a rational creator of the world would also be moral and would desire moral interaction with his creatures---is not also something that we have good reason to believe has actually occurred, in fact, quite frequently.

[truthpusher]

291. I believe that God is best found in personal experiences.

I too find my personal experiences as my best evidence that there is something more.

[daleo]

327. I agree with you

The problem always comes when people can't accept that the experiences are personal, and have to be shared forcefully with others.

[Beetwasher]

210. FLEW REFUTES THIS ARTICLE! It's Bullshit!

"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."

--snip--

http://www.secweb.org/asset.asp?AssetID=138

LOL! I guess it's what we can expect nowadays from lazy, corporate controlled media. Seriously though, the journalist who wrote the first article should be fired. What a lazy shitbag.

[VegasWolf]

211. Just another attempt to try and keep the sheep from straying. n/t

[Merlin]

218. Sorry but the refutation itself is BULLSHIT. The original story stands.

The piece you cite is undated. The AP story at the top of this thread cites numerous very recent sources to confirm what it says about Flew's belief.

One source is a new video, "Has Science Discovered God?", in which Flew says 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."

That video was made at a from a New York discussion last May.

The article also cites a letter from Slew to the August-September issue of Britain's Philosophy Now magazine, in which Flew says: "It has become inordinately difficult even to begin to think about constructing a naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first reproducing organism."

The article goes on to say that just this week, Flew wrote an exposition of his introduction to a new edition of his "God and Philosophy," scheduled for release next year by Prometheus Press.

In it, the article continues, Flew says that if his belief upsets people, well "that's too bad. My whole life has been guided by the principle of Plato's Socrates: Follow the evidence, wherever it leads."

Furthermore, just last week, the article tells us, 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, where he assured atheists that Flew accepts only a "minimal God" and believes in no afterlife, and "apart from curiosity, I don't think it's like a big deal."

Finally, according to the article, the AP interviewed Flew and he said his current ideas are similar to "intelligent design" in that he too sees evidence for a guiding force in the construction of the universe, though he also believes in evolution.

[Beetwasher]

220. Uh, No, Read It, It's Directly From Flew

WTF are you talking about?

Sorry to Disappoint, but I'm Still an Atheist!
by Antony Flew

Flew DOES NOT believe in God in his own words he is STILL an atheist. I'll take his word over yours about what you think he's saying any day.

Your belief is blinding you to the facts. How silly. The fact is, the orginal article in this thread is bullshit and poorly written and based on second and third hand accounts of what Flew said. Flew has directly refuted it. You can remain ignorant, but that's Flew himself talking there and he says exactly what the misunderstanding was. Read it for crying out loud. You are wrong, totally wrong. He was making arguments that were taken out of context and you are still peddling the out of context bullshit. He clears it up. He's still an atheist, he does not believe in god and he has NOT changed his position, at all. Yeesh.

[jwcomer]

229. You are both mistaken

Merlin says it isn't dated. Beetwasher says it is recent. If you make it to the bottom of the article is IS dated but is NOT recent.

Date published: 08/31/2001

See also, below, for confirmation of the publishing date.
http://www.infidels.org/secular_web/new/2001/august2001.html

[Beetwasher]

233. Corrected Link

http://www.secweb.org/asset.asp?AssetID=369

It appears the original article is STILL bullshit. Flew is not sure, but that's far from believing.

--snip--

"The fact of the matter is: Flew hasn't really decided what to believe."

--snip--

"For now, the story of Antony Flew's change of mind should not be exaggerated. We should wait for him to complete his investigation of the matter and declare a more definite conclusion, before claiming he has "converted," much less to any particular religious view."

--snip--

A far cry from what the ABC article implies.

[dhinojosa]

234. Christians, Muslims, Jews, Atheists etc. don't know shit.

1. Christians can't prove the existence of their version on God.

2. Muslims can't prove existence of Allah.

3. Jews, can't prove God exists either.

4. Atheists, can't prove that there's an absence of God.

What does that mean? That atheists are as clueless as the religions they seek to criticize. They can't prove shit.

That is why I am agnostic. So the Pope, Flew, Bush, Sharon, Abdallah and all these freaks can kiss my zitty ass because I am being honest and saying "I don't know". And if you think about it, you don't know either.

That's not a bad thing either. I am impervious to religious zealotry and cannot be convinced otherwise, and I am happy for it.

:)

[Merlin]

245. You didn't even read the article did you.

If you did you'd know he's not endorsing religion.

If you can possibly do it, try stretching your mind to imagine it's possible that all religions could well be just as fucked up as you say they are, yet there could still be a being smarter and more powerful than humans in the universe.

Such an entity need bear no resemblance whatsoever to the one concocted by said mythologies.

This is the kind of a "god" Flew now believes in. It is a "god" that created the universe, vested it with brilliant, complex rules of operation (rules we discover as "science") and set it in motion to operate on its own.

[dhinojosa]

273. Not all of it, I got bored about half way.

1. My mind is so stretched I don't think I can take it any more.

2. All religions can be fucked up the way I say they are.

3. Again, this boobery falls in the "I don't know" category. "could be", "possibly", "probably", "perhaps" is a way of saying "I don't know", that's all.

4. I am cooler than a beer on ice, I am just saying we don't know right now.


Oh, since we are making guesswork of things we don't know. My guess is that there is a group of uber-people called "the G.O.D.". The "G.O.D." stands for Group of Developers. They are the true ancestors of our new line of human race. The previous ring of the G.O.D created us as we are today, and the previous ring before them created our parent ring, and so on. It is our job to understand feelings, human emotions and philosophy, and anatomy, math, and so on so that we become the next ring of the G.O.D. by get this.....creating our own universe. Cool huh? Republicans in their infinite stupidity and ignorance are the ones that will do anything to stop us from achieving this goal. But I tell you now man, we will succeed! Only until then, we then become a part of the G.O.D. and unlock the key to all existence.

I call this train of thought Dannoism, and I thought of this when I got drunk.

[Merlin]

244. But the point remains that the article at the top of the thread stands.

Despite all the smoke beatwasher is trying to blow up our asses, it is incontrovertible that Flew now admits of a deistic, "minimalist" god. That is the correct conclusion, both about the article and about the creator.

[Beetwasher]

251. Bullshit, You're Totally Wrong AND The Article Is BULLSHIT

and misrepresents Flew.

Flew is NOT sure. He suggest it's POSSIBLE. He is NOT a believer.

I know it's hard for you to understand because you are blinded by your belief and want so much for your world view to be validated somehow. But you're wrong. Read the corrected link.

The ABC article is bullshit.

http://www.secweb.org/asset.asp?AssetID=369

It appears the original article is STILL bullshit. Flew is not sure, but that's far from believing.

--snip--

"The fact of the matter is: Flew hasn't really decided what to believe."

--snip--

"For now, the story of Antony Flew's change of mind should not be exaggerated. We should wait for him to complete his investigation of the matter and declare a more definite conclusion, before claiming he has "converted," much less to any particular religious view."

--snip--

Update (December 2004)

Flew has now given me permission to quote him directly. I asked him point blank what he would mean if he ever asserted that "probably God exists," to which he responded (in a letter in his own hand, dated 19 October 2004):

I do not think I will ever make that assertion, precisely because any assertion which I am prepared to make about God would not be about a God in that sense ... I think we need here a fundamental distinction between the God of Aristotle or Spinoza and the Gods of the Christian and the Islamic Revelations.

--snip--

A far cry from what the ABC article implies.

[Merlin]

259. LOL! Touchy, aren't we! And wrong as well.

Read the quote YOU YOURSELF INCLUDED in your own post, and weep:

"I do not think I will ever make that assertion, precisely because any assertion which I am prepared to make about God would not be about a God in that sense ... I think we need here a fundamental distinction between the God of Aristotle or Spinoza and the Gods of the Christian and the Islamic Revelations."

The clear implication of this -- along with the TON of evidence supplied in the original AP story--which you apparently STILL refuse to read--is that Flew refuses to agree with the "Gods of the Christian and the Islamic Revelations," but that he has come to admit of the possibility of a "God of Aristotle or Spinoza."

Of course to infer something from an implication requires the use of logic, so I can understand why you might be having some difficulty here.

[Beetwasher]

271. Do You Know What Possbility Means?

He's admitting it's possible, not that he believes. Good grief are you dense. What's the title of the bullshit ABC story? It's way off. He's NOT a believer. He's come to think IT'S POSSIBLE. You do know the difference, don't you?

Amazing ignorance.

[truthpusher]

322. I am curious about your determination?

Irreverent Fervor is cause for suspect.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

230. OMG the closet fundies are blowing a gasket! TOO funny! (nt)

[truthpusher]

321. Date of your article: Date published: 08/31/2001

[MAlibdem]

213. somebody's afraid of dying...

hehe...

well, that's angst, isn't it?

[aikido15]

256. Exactly...

I think you hit it!

[SaintLouisBlues]

215. Did he fall into a foxhole?

n/t

[dhinojosa]

235. Christians, Muslims, Jews, Atheists etc. don't know shit.

Sorry, my first one ended in a place that it should've. :)

-------------------------------------------------------------

1. Christians can't prove the existence of their version on God.

2. Muslims can't prove existence of Allah.

3. Jews, can't prove God exists either.

4. Atheists, can't prove that there's an absence of God.

What does that mean? That atheists are as clueless as the religions they seek to criticize. They can't prove shit.

That is why I am agnostic. So the Pope, Flew, Bush, Sharon, Abdallah and all these freaks can kiss my zitty ass because I am being honest and saying "I don't know". And if you think about it, you don't know either.

That's not a bad thing either. I am impervious to religious zealotry and cannot be convinced otherwise, and I am happy for it.

[dummy-du1]

238. So physics is wrong

because physicists cannot prove, that a perpetuum mobile doesn't exist? Oh, well, i prefer believing you are wrong, instead. ;)

[dhinojosa]

239. No, physicists just don't know

It's not a bad thing not knowing, just say "I don't know". We don't have to know everything. Physicists just don't know if the perpetual machine can or does exist. I am sure we will find out, or maybe not.

P.S. I am assuming you are talking about the machine and not the music structure.

[dummy-du1]

243. Not, quite true

Physicists just don't know if the perpetual machine can or does exist.


Well, actually they say the know, it's called the 2nd law of thermodynamics. I don't think you find many scientist that hold the opinion that natural laws don't have any bearing to reality.

[dhinojosa]

275. 2nd Law of Thermodynamics?

Dude, the perpetual machine violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics. WTF?
They are not one in the same. Something perpetual has to return state, and not only that but would need initial energy and that totally violates that law.

Things will never be the same, my friend, never.

http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/museum/unwork.htm

Anyways, this is another hole, we cannot dig out of. Because what if the 2nd law doesn't apply anymore.........well, we would be back to "I don't know" again.

*Sigh*

[daleo]

328. Poincare's eternal recurrence theorem

I think that is what you are getting at. My reading is, that a lot of people were very disturbed by his proof. Supposedly Neitzie's (sp?) superman idea was a response to the eternal recurrence theorem.

Briefly, the theorem states that in any system that is truly unbounded (infinite) every state of that system will eventually be revisited - in fact, this will happen an infinite number of times.

On edit - for example, if a gas contained in a jar existed forever, every state of the molecules of the gas (position, velocity) would eventually have to be reproduced, an infinite number of times.

[dummy-du1]

330. Reading?

You should read my postings before you respond.

Of course it violates the 2nd law, that's why it's possible to formulate the law by stating that such a machine doesn't exist.

It's quite easy:

all(x) Px <=> not exists(x) Px

Well, you haven't answered my original question yet and that was probably your intent. If you feel like doing it at some time, I am still waiting...

[Merlin]

246. You didn't even read the article, did you.

If you did you'd know he's not endorsing religion.

If you can possibly do it, try stretching your mind to imagine it's possible that all religions could well be just as fucked up as you say they are, yet there could still be a being smarter and more powerful than humans in the universe.

Such an entity need bear no resemblance whatsoever to the one concocted by said mythologies.

This is the kind of a "god" Flew now believes in. It is a "god" that created the universe, vested it with brilliant, complex rules of operation (rules we discover as "science") and set it in motion to operate on its own.

[VegasWolf]

295. But this kind of god seems worthless. If it has no active

intervention either for good or bad, then it is impotent
with respect to mankind. Many of us, as we drifted away
from religion, which I think you agree is bad, drifted
for a while considering what I call "the giant Ray-oVac in
the sky." Sort of a neutered, indifferent power source.

Just because the universe is complex, and our science is
way to immature to describe it. Look how far we've come in
the last 100 years, Einstein overturned Newton, imagine
what the next 100 years will. Lack of a proof in physics
is hardly proof of the existence of god. Because the
world is complex, doesn't cause me to believe in any sort
of god. We worshiped lightning before we understood it.

[aikido15]

255. WHATEVER!

:puke:

[GOPBasher]

258. I'm with him, personally.

As science teacher, I think the statistical chances of life evolving to this complexity by accident are very, very slim. I believe in God because of this.

[Merlin]

260. You're in growing company--especially among scientists.

I think it was the unlocking of the human genome that opened up many scientific minds.

Do you also agree that positing the existence of a creator does not necessarily also imply the existence of a god like the one we typically think of, e.g. the god of the bible or the god of religion?

[GOPBasher]

267. That's an awesome question.

In my humble opinion, I don't think it's *necessarily* the type of God that we always think, though that's what I personally believe in. What do you think?

[Merlin]

280. Thanks for asking.

Hope you don't regret it half way through this post. :-)

First, let me say I don't want to do harm to your faith or belief system, so feel free to blow me off if what I say is offensive to you.

My beliefs are somewhat complex, and I'm actually busily writing a book about them called "God Without Religion," which explains my interest in this thread.

One of the reasons for writing it is that I believe way too many thinking people--who tend to be progressives--in rejecting organized religion, also reject the idea of a god. They throw out the baby with the bathwater. Religion is not the same thing as god.

I believe religion is mostly mythology. Its moral teachings have been very helpful to society. Many people who believe it and practice it and serve it are good and decent and sincere.

But the bible--as one who has actually read it--is in no way "the word of God," and--failing that--there is no evidence whatsoever for the god of organized religion. If the bible is the word of men--not God--then it is mere hypothesis; worse, it's primitive hypothesis.

For evidence of this, I invite you to read just the beginning of Exodus. God tells Moses to appeal to his childhood friend, the Pharaoh Ramses, to let his people go. But God also says he will "harden the heart" of the Pharaoh. Then in response to the Pharaoh's hardened heart (caused by God himself), God inflicts 10 horrible plagues upon all the people of Egypt--excluding the "Hebrews." Ask yourself if a god capable of creating the universe would behave in such a perverse manner.

Then there's the God of the NT. This is the God Who Christianity claims was and is loving, personal, all knowing, all powerful, all good and forgiving, yet somehow demanded that His beloved "only begotten Son" must die a horrible death in order to "redeem" mankind from some horrible "sin" that it was "guilty" of because Eve made Adam eat the apple (notice it's always the woman's fault; c.f. Bathsheeba and Salome). By who's rules was such expiation necessary? Why, by God's very own rules, of course. But that sure doesn't sound like a loving, personal, all knowing, all powerful, all good and forgiving God. Such a god is odd beyond belief, quite literally.

So that's what I don't believe.

What I do believe in--above all--is reason. Fortunately it is one of our magnificent human faculties. Reason says there must be a cause behind the universe; a force of immense power and brilliance.

The deists stop there. "God exists!," says Paine. "And there the matter rests."

But I believe we are capable of knowing much more through reason. We are blessed with much scientific progress since America's founding fathers--the most prominent of whom were deists, not Christians--met in Philadelphia.

Science provides reasoned insight into the mind of god. We can see how "it" (god) works. We can marvel at the beautiful, magnificent complexity of its creations. It turns out those religious songs praising the amazing powers of the almighty were and are right on!

I do not think, however, that such evidence provides any real suggestion that god relates to us on a personal level, or that there is an afterlife. That is sad for somebody like me, a former Catholic, to get beyond. But the compensation is a solid, unfettered, concrete grasp of reality.

I believe god vested existence with intelligence in the same way a computer programmer brings life, or at least systematic replicability, to a program. Intelligence is of necessity rationality. Rationality is comprehensible to humans.

Through reason, we are--without any 10 commandments--able to discern "right" from "wrong" and "good" from "bad" on our own. This has been termed--by Aquinas, Maritain, and other great thinkers--the Natural Law.

That is the Good News god brings to us! We can, with our own powers of reason, understand and harmonize with the universe.

Spirituality is a key part of being human. All of us have the ability to "communicate" with others--living and dead--in our minds through rational harmony. We comprehend how another specific being thinks or "is" and we can relate to that perception intuitively. That, I believe, is spirituality.

Finally, there is more Good News. This, I believe, goes somewhat beyond reason and enters the realm of "faith."

All the universe is disintegrating. Entropy is taking hold. Stars are running out of gas. Orbits are decaying. Planets are eroding. Earth's resources are being depleted, humans age and die. And on and on.

But, running completely contrary to this predictable pattern of the physical universe, is the pattern of human development. Mankind is proving that human existence is capable of improving; society is capable of attaining ever higher levels of enlightened governance (present governance notwithstanding), evolving and improving. I believe this "force" is a capacity god has vested us with the potential for. It is dependent upon reason and understanding for its perpetuation. And it puts us in the driver's seat. It is a wonderful thing to be able to participate in "making the world a better place," because it really can happen!

That part is a bit pollyanaish, and thus perhaps "faith based," but I believe it deeply and it's one reason why I'm a progressive/liberal/Democrat.

If you've read this far, you are a person of enormous patience and I am immensely appreciative.

[GOPBasher]

288. Whoa, excellent post!

That was a really interesting post. There were many things you said that I totally agree with, and many things I never thought about that will put much thought into now. Thanks!

[shrike]

301. Very much so

I'm a believer myself. But I also think that the nature of God is ultimately unknowable. Religion is man's puny attempt to understand him/her/it.

[VegasWolf]

308. I don't know any scientist who's "converted." Just a point of reference.

[Hosnon]

312. I believe in something like a Logos for the universe. Something that

dictates that things as algebra even exist.

[truthpusher]

323. Absolutely..

..I personally believe that God has nothing to do with religion. There are some really thoughtful atheists out there. But the ones that I mostly come across are so pissed off at organized religion that it is nearly impossible for them to get there head out of the sand long enough to get a fresh view every once in a while. They are sometimes as bad as the Fundies themselves.

[shrike]

299. The late Stephen Jay Gould had a different take on this

Gould, an atheist, said that the odds of life on developing on earth as it did were unbelievably small. However, this did not mean that God had a hand in things -- rather, he felt we were probably alone in the universe -- the odds were so much against life (like ours) developing anywhere else.

Gould was an interesting man and a friend of Sagan's.

[brentspeak]

261. Well, good for him

So he changed his mind about God/Creator/Deity and now atheists are all bent out of shape by it. Were they really hanging on every word that Flew, a fellow humble human being, said concerning the Meaning of Life?

"How dare he!/What an idiot!/Changing his mind!/He's an old man, that's why!"....

[Merlin]

265. LOL! So true.

He's a traitor to the atheistic cause! God damn him!

[neweurope]

269. 266 posts so far on that matter. One becomes what one hates the

most, let's keep that in mind.

I believe in God. Some kind of God. So what?

Why 266 posts on an 81 year old man who probably won't live another week or year? Hawkins said the same thing, so did Einstein. Those who are interested in spiritual matters reflect about it, those that aren't, don't.

But don't fall for the trap: Because religious fundamentalists are taking over (or rather providing a fig leaf for the administration which must be totally godless) don't start discussing this for hours on end. You wouldn't have five years ago. Don't let the fundamentalists determine the topics of the day.

Topic of the day is PATRIOT II.

---------

GET OUT

[shrike]

304. You know, you're right

I'm as guilty as everyone else on this thread. Last post on this topic -- much to the disappointment of Beetwasher, I'm afraid.

[VegasWolf]

307. It's just because this thread is so much fun.

[essarhaddon]

274. yay, the complexity of nature

For the love of me I cannot understand why some people think this universe is so complex and rare. Complex and rare compared to what? Do they know less complex universes? Even so, let's pretend this universe is so freaking rare and wonderful, so what. If you type letters randomly on a screen, eternally, at some point a Shakespeare's sonnet will appear, does it mean that God exists? If the universe, let's say, recreates itself eternally, the rare thing would be that at some point, it didn't become something like it is right now.

Anyway, this God which is "not actively involved in people's lives" has any use? Why did he create the universe? Did he/she/it get bored with his/her/its TiVO and decided to run some creation stuff to keep him/her/itself entertained? What about evil? All these innocent people suffering in the world are just events which God is indifferent to? Well Flew, I don't know if there's a God, but yours is not gonna reap a lot of followers. Ordinary people want useful gods, you know, the kind of gods which help you to pass a math test, win the lottery, or hate the homosexuals.

[Merlin]

284. Finally we agree on something.

You're right. Flew's god is not going to gain many followers--in the way that organized religion's god does--because it has no priestly class and because, as you say, it does not do personal favors.

That is both its downside and its upside. It is a god of pure reason--as is evidenced by the logical harmony embedded in all of creation and decipherable through science.

So the adherents of such a force will remain the most enlightened among us--not those seeking a dependency or mythology. That was also true just after the dawn of the enlightenment when America's founding fathers, the most prominent of whom were deists, not Christians, did a pretty good job of creating a nation. Thereafter their belief system was overwhelmed by the zealous forces of religion as we see happening all around us today.

But eventually, over the ages, this concept of god will survive, because it is rationally and intuitively correct. The gods of Abraham and even Christ will die. The teachings of Jesus, however will remain, because Jesus had little to do with the creation of the Christian mythology that surrounds him. He was a social critic and philosopher who was also the first liberal.

[superconnected]

282. what is it with DU and religion bashers anyway

I don't go up to atheists and insult their beliefs, I don't go up to other religions and insult those people. Most people wouldn't do that in life or on the net.

But on this site, there are plenty of people that want to insult you and your religion and even act like you don't have a right to have one.

It's really bigoted and narrow. Right now there's a thread on some school and a christmas concert where they were going to take out the christian song and play other religions songs(my question is why should religion be in the school songs at all), but that thread was bashing christians with they must have little faith if jesus doesn't exists just because his song was taken out.

It was uncalled for because nothing in the satrical artical said anything about Christians faith being destroyed if their song were removed. Instead a bunch of atheists ran on it and jumped on the chance to insult christians.

They always do.

I don't get it. It's not unlike insulting black people who walk in the room really.

It has low values and it's way against what I'm about. I'm so disappointed to find that kind of closed mindedness on this site.

And this site is RAMPANT with it.

[Merlin]

287. It is a sad fault many of us have in response to being villified by some.

True enough many who are liberal do not share this flaw, and fight against it. They, like you, are to be commended.

The reason for the religion bashing is somewhat understandable. In recent years, self anointed spokesmen for organized religion have demonized liberals relentlessly. Limbaugh and Liddy, no less than Robertson and Falwell have declared liberals to be the lowest form of human life; scum of the earth; evil; despicable; traitorous; baby killers, and on and on. I too have completely had it with that kind of venom coming from the self proclaimed religious righteous.

Unfortunately, as a result, many liberals stereotype all religious people as being like these pricks of the right wing. In fact, MOST religious people are good, honorable, decent, sincere, fair minded people. They may maintain beliefs which the "more enlightened" don't sustain. But we are smarter than they are and we should not be holding them accountable for the sins of the sons-of-bitches who demonize us.

And that takes us to part 2 of the problem.

Liberals tend to be intellectuals. Intellectuals see religion (rightly in my opinion) as a mythologically based tool for the control of the faithful by the powerful.

So liberals have a natural disposition against religion. But this would normally not manifest itself in the extreme bitterness you see. The reason for that bitterness is a backlash against the polarizing and reprehensible behavior of the super religious of the right wing and their scurrilous demonization of liberals and of all we stand for.

We liberals must work hard not to be prejudicial against the religious. We share many beliefs with them. Many of them are our natural allies. We need them to be on our side.

[superconnected]

310. yeah but it's the same thing as hating all muslims for 911

.

[regnaD kciN]

320. Self-Contradiction 101...

First off, you say that the main reason is the hostility from those on the "religious right." Then you say that it's because "liberals have a natural disposition against religion" (speak for yourself, BTW).

You don't notice that these contradict each other? Either you hate "religion" (and, let's face it, in this context "religion" = Christianity) because it's basically a set of manipulative lies, or you hate it simply because it is being misused for right-wing purposes. It's hard to hold to both of these at the same time.

I would like to propose a third scenario, which strikes me as a much more accurate analysis of what I see at DU. There's a core group of members here who are, when it all comes down to dust, hardline a) anti-religion and/or b) anti-Christianity. If the representatives of organized religion at this time consisted of Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Michael Lerner, Dorothy Day, and the Sufi mystics, this group's hatred would be unassuaged. However, they have been given a great gift, in that so much of today's religious world is dominated by conservatives. This allows them much greater leeway to express their hatred, and veil it as political rather than an inherent animosity toward religion and its adherents. Far from being dismayed by the religious right, I suspect the Atheist Army here is secretly delighted by it, as it allows them to get away with attacks that would otherwise be seen clearly as the intolerance and incivility they truly are.

For, after all, if one were truly offended by religious conservatives, rather than by those who profess religious beliefs per se, wouldn't the logical thing be to "take up arms" against said conservatives, rather than going after religious people at a site like DU, where any believers are almost certainly not members of that group?

:shrug:

[Merlin]

326. Perhaps. But people are driven more by emotion than by logic.

You are, as I understand it, maintaining that DU is for some reason unusually populated by people whose beliefs are "hardline a) anti-religion and/or b) anti-Christianity.

You, however, believe--as I understand it--that they came to their views for unnamed reasons other than the two I stated, and just happen to coagulate here on DU.

There could be something to that. Many of these folks have a strong libertarian streak in them and practice what I like to call "spoiled brat politics," meaning the are more interested in entitlements than in responsibility.

But surely you can't deny there are many--like me, f'rinstance--who are pissed blue at being demonized from the right wing pulpit. I'm an old fart so I can see clearly that it is a minority of the faithful doing this dirty work. But many who are younger don't understand that.

Don't really follow your claim that the two elements of my explanation are somehow mutually exclusive.

Clarifying one point. My statement "liberals have a natural disposition against religion" was sloppily worded.

I meant that liberals, taken as a group, tend to have an unusually large percentage of persons with dispositions against religion. That, I believe, for the reasons I gave, is a correct statement.

Thanks for your thoughtful response.

[shrike]

303. Sad but true

[Hosnon]

309. Yea, sometimes some here can be just as bad as the neocons on another site

I post on.

292. atheist sees the light

senility. pity.

[ikojo]

293. He's cramming for the final exam....

/sarcasm.

[killbotfactory]

300. So?

Doesn't sound like much of a "conversion".

[Hosnon]

306. Seems to me that he just acknowledged that there is

something along the lines of a First Cause. I'd say he's a nice example of what I believe. Einstein felt that God was that underlying mystery that is always there that is the basis of everything - that thing we seem to always run into when we dig deep enough. Doesn't make me in anyway believe he popped up in a manger 2000 years ago in the Middle East though - or even that it should be called he or given any human characteristics.

[VegasWolf]

311. Now he and awol have something in common! n/t

[Kimber Scott]

314. What's wrong with that? He's just as entitled to believe in an

intelligent catalyst to the universe as we know it, as not.

Jeez.

[Swamp Rat]

325. No he doesn't. He's just fucking with us.

HAHA! He doen't believe in deities. It's all just a big joke to get folks riled up.

[rodeodance]

329. "..have some similarity with American "intelligent design" theorists, "...

.....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. ......

[Moderator]

335. Locking

This thread is no longer productive.