In May 2004 leading atheistic philosopher Antony Flew spoke at a symposium at New York University where he was supposed to be debating believers. He shocked his audience by announcing that he now believed there is a God. He explained to the audience why he changed his mind.
What I think the DNA material has done is that it has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinarily diverse elements to work together. It’s the enormous complexity of the number of elements and the enormous subtlety of the ways they work together. The meeting of these two parts at the right time by chance is simply minute. It is all a matter of the enormous complexity by which the results were achieved, which looked to me like the work of intelligence.
Posted: December 4th 2008
George Locke
I want to point out that the sort of intelligent design apparently advocated by Flew is quite different from most ID claims. As far as I can tell, Flew does not dispute the theory of evolution in any way. He does not dispute common ancestry or the power of natural selection.
Flew’s claims are limited to the theory of abiogenesis (an issue outside the scope of evolution), which he says is impossible without a deity. Intelligent design advocates make the same claim. As far as I can tell, that’s the only claim of Flew’s that agrees with intelligent design.
It seems to me that Flew’s argument is merely a god of the gaps. This kind of argument typically exhibits the fallacy of argument from ignorance, “I don’t know how X happened, science can’t tell me, so god must have done it!”
It’s possible that a rational person could be convinced that abiogenesis is impossible without a deity, but I don’t think the evidence supports that conclusion.
Posted: December 17th 2008
Steve Zara www
No.
The ID advocate is in a very awkward position. First of all, there has been a long history of mistaken judgement about complexity in many areas of science. A new idea can come along that gives a new perspective on things, and suddenly the situation seems much simpler. This Einstein achieved with his theories of relativity – he showed that Newton’s static and eternal God-maintained universe was simpler, dynamic, and required no creator to sustain it. It happened in particle physics, when hundreds of particles were found to be combinations of just a few sets. It happens in mathematics, when quite different branches of the subject are shown to be just alternative expressions of a core idea. When we discover new areas of reality, they can seem bewilderingly complex, until we start to find the rules and patterns, as we almost invariably do.
ID attempts to stifle the search for such simplicity-revealing patterns. It says “look no further”. However, even commonly described examples of supposedly irreducibly complex design have been shown to be very reducible, such as how the bacterial flagellum mechanism is related to a simpler excretory pore system. The mechanism fails as a motor with fewer parts, but is used for other things. Re-use of parts is indeed a common theme of evolution, as revealed by the search for common structures and patterns. An informed ID advocate would know of this failure of the idea.
Secondly, requiring design is attempting to prove a negative; that no future simple explanation of what may now appear complex will ever be found. (This is ironic, considering how often the “you can’t prove a negative” is used an an argument to support belief in a Supernatural Designer) It is also implicitly highly arrogant, as it suggests that our feelings about what is irreducibly complex is some measure of the truth. In a universe that shows no sign of being designed for us, there is no reason why our feelings about such matters should be any guide to reality.
So, ID neglects history (even its own, with its failed examples), it attempts to hold back research, and it is an arrogance stance, implying that humanity has reached some intellectual
summit.
There cannot be a truly informed, rational and honest advocade of ID.
Posted: December 11th 2008
Dave Hitt www
No.
ID is, by definition, based on misinformed ignorance of a multitude of sciences, including astronomy, biology and geology, to name a few. Someone who is woefully misinformed about a subject can’t make an informed argument about that subject.
The fact that an atheist changed his mind proves just one thing – that atheists, like anyone else, can change their mind. An atheist becoming a creationist doesn’t prove the validity of creationism any more than a Christian becoming an atheist proves evolution.
Posted: December 7th 2008
Reed Braden www
Antony Flew was an old man when he made this conversion. Old people sometimes have a very warped view of reality as they near death. My great-grandmother thought she was 16-years-old before she died at the age of 86.
That aside, once one takes a leap of faith from the irrational, but understandable, mindset of, “I’m not personally convinced by this massive mound of evidence,” or, “There’s a hole in this work-in-progress theory, it must have some deep flaws at its core,” to the exceedingly ridiculous claim of, “Jesus is Lord,” that’s what we like to call a non-sequitur.
I have had periods of doubt where the question of abiogenesis or the origin of consciousness or the Big Bang rattled around in my mind until I was flooded with doubt about the scientific origin theories. I did the sensible thing and asked myself which was the more likely: That we haven’t explained everything yet, but when we do it will, like all other scientific conclusions, be naturalistic, or that some omnipotent being who didn’t, himself, need to be created, created everything. The choice was a fairly simple one to make.
I’m sorry that Mr. Flew couldn’t be as reasonable.
Posted: December 7th 2008
SmartLX www
You’re saying Antony Flew is convinced by the argument from the improbability of abiogenesis. I’m not, and the fact that Flew is has greatly diminished the esteem in which the scientific community once held him.
We’ve been over the subject ourselves here and here, and possibly elsewhere. In a nutshell, though the chances of the elements of life forming are minute, both the amount of possible elements and the amount of opportunities across the entire planet and over the planet’s first billion years are immense to the extent that they are practically infinite. It’s unlikely, sure, but if you buy billions of lottery tickets, you’re probably going to win at least once.
Posted: December 6th 2008
logicel
At first, it all seemed very exciting. Did this relatively known British philosopher (he coined the No true Scotsman fallacy in 1975), who was gone from the limelight for two decades, discover some new argument that has not already been totally dismantled by critical thinkers that god(s) exists? Oh goodie, let’s see it!!! Instead, this news only pointed to a most heartrendingly and pathetically sad affair.
Once you embrace IDiocy, you are no longer arguing from rationality. To align with a hypothesis and a group that has been thoroughly discredited both by a huge consensus of scientists and at the Dover Trial (for IDs Wedge strategy, including the unconstitutional and sneaky infiltration of religion into science classes) simply means that you have 'jumped the shark.’ In other words, you have lost all credibility.
Oddly, the IDiots regard Flew’s very confused and contracted saga (Is he a deist, is he still an atheist, is he a theist, is he still an atheist, oh no, he’s an IDiot and is hanging out with the Liars for Jesus!) as weakening atheism, rather than the fact that their meddling with a confused, elderly man is only confirming their lack of intellectual honesty and their desperation.
Using some of the answerers’ responses to a recent question about how to argue against IDiocy, we can see how Flew’s quote shows that he is no longer able to see the gaping holes in IDiocy like he once could. That is, why are horrendous 'intelligent design’ mistakes like the human propensity to choke and harmful parasitic behavior (feeding on living tissue much to the hosts’ disadvantage and protracted pain) no longer important considerations? It points to a very stupid 'intelligent’ designer. Also, Flew seems to conveniently 'forget’ the nagging question of who designed this idiot of a designer is still unresolved by accepting ID. And we won’t mention that gaps in our understanding of reality does not mean that we latch onto a miserably failed hypothesis of goddidit.
Posted: December 6th 2008