here it is
My Name is Benjamin Allen, and I am an 18 year old biology freshman at
Arizona State University writing to you out of Mesa Arizona. Having
recently read your Thursday, December 09, 2004 online article entitled
"Leading Atheist Philosopher Concludes God's Real" I did a little bit
of research on my own, and found that the previously mentioned article
was false. I base this on a piece by Anthony Flew, the atheist in
question, directly responding to the rumor that he had converted to
theism.
The article can be found here
http://www.secweb.org/asset.asp?AssetID=369
"Antony Flew Considers God...Sort Of
by Richard Carrier
Antony Flew is considering the possibility that there might be a God.
Sort of. Flew is one of the most renowned atheists of the 20th
century, even making the shortlist of "Contemporary Atheists" at
About.com. So if he has changed his mind to any degree, whatever you
may think of his reasons, the event itself is certainly newsworthy.
After hearing of this, I contacted Antony directly to discuss it, and
I thought it fitting to cut short any excessive speculation or
exaggeration by writing a brief report on, well, what's going on.
Once upon a time, a rumor hit the Internet that Flew had converted to
Christianity. The myth appeared in 2001 and popped up again in 2003.
On each occasion, Flew refuted the claim personally, standing by his
response to its first occasion with his own reply for publication at
the Secular Web (Antony Flew, "Sorry to Disappoint, but I'm Still an
Atheist!" 2001). So I was quite skeptical the third time around. But
this time, things have indeed changed somewhat from where Flew stood
in his 2001 article. Antony and I exchanged letters on the issue
recently, and what I report here about his current views comes from
him directly.
The news of his "conversion" this time came from a number of avenues,
but the three I have good information on are an interview with Gary
Habermas soon to be published by Philosophia Christi in which Flew
appears to depart from his past views about God, a letter Flew wrote
to a popular philosophy journal expressing doubts about the ability of
science to explain the origin of life ("On Darwinism and Theology,"
Philosophy Now 47, August/September 2004, p. 22; cf. also Flew's
Review of Roy Varghese's The Wonder of the World), and, just recently
on national TV (the October 9 episode of "Faith Under Fire"), J. P.
Moreland used Flew's "conversion" as an argument for supernaturalism.
The fact of the matter is: Flew hasn't really decided what to believe.
He affirms that he is not a Christian--he is still quite certain that
the Gods of Christianity or Islam do not exist, that there is no
revealed religion, and definitely no afterlife of any kind (he stands
by everything he argued in his 2001 book Merely Mortal: Can You
Survive Your Own Death?). But he is increasingly persuaded that some
sort of Deity brought about this universe, though it does not
intervene in human affairs, nor does it provide any postmortem
salvation. He says he has in mind something like the God of Aristotle,
a distant, impersonal "prime mover." It might not even be conscious,
but a mere force. In formal terms, he regards the existence of this
minimal God as a hypothesis that, at present, is perhaps the best
explanation for why a universe exists that can produce complex life.
But he is still unsure. In fact, he asked that I not directly quote
him yet, until he finally composes his new introduction to a final
edition of his book God and Philosophy, due out next year. He hasn't
completed it yet, precisely because he is still examining the evidence
and thinking things over. Anything he says now, could change tomorrow.
I also heard a rumor that Flew claimed in a private letter that the
kalam cosmological argument proved the existence of God (see relevant
entries in Cosmological Arguments). But he assures me that is not what
he believes. He said that, at best, the kalam is an argument for a
first cause in the Aristotelian sense, and nothing more--and he
maintains that, kalam or not, it is still not logically necessary that
the universe had a cause at all, much less a "personal" cause. Flew's
tentative, mechanistic Deism is not based on any logical proofs, but
solely on physical, scientific evidence, or the lack thereof, and is
therefore subject to change with more information--and he confesses he
has not been able to keep up with the relevant literature in science
and theology, which means we should no longer treat him as an expert
on this subject (as Moreland apparently did).
Once Flew gives me permission to quote him I will expand this article
with more information about his views and the reasons for them. That
will have to wait for when Flew himself has finally mulled things over
and come to something like a stable decision about what he thinks is
most probable, and that may not happen until the release of his 2005
edition of God and Philosophy. For now, I think his view can best be
described as questioning, rather than committed. And there is much to
criticize in his rationale even for considering Aristotelian Deism. He
is most impressed, he says, by Gerald Schroeder's book The Hidden Face
of God: How Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth (2001), but Schroeder
(a Jewish theologian and physicist) has been heavily criticized for
"fudging" the facts to fit his argument--see Mark Perakh, "Not a Very
Big Bang about Genesis" (1999); and my own discussion in "Are the Odds
Against the Origin of Life Too Great to Accept?" (2000), as well as my
peer-reviewed article "The Argument from Biogenesis," soon to appear
in Biology & Philosophy. Flew points out that he has not yet had time
to examine any of the critiques of Schroeder. Nor has he examined any
of the literature of the past five or ten years on the science of
life's origin, which has more than answered his call for "constructing
a naturalistic theory" of the origin of life. This is not to say any
particular theory has been proven--rather, there are many viable
theories fitting all the available evidence that have yet to be
refuted, so Flew cannot maintain (as in his letter to Philosophy Now)
that it is "inordinately difficult even to begin to think about" such
theories. I have pointed all this out to him, and he is thinking it
over.
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.
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.'
Rather, he would only have in mind "the non-interfering God of the
people called Deists--such as Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin."
Indeed, he remains adamant that "theological propositions can neither
be verified nor falsified by experience," exactly as he argued in
"Theology and Falsification." Regarding J. P. Moreland using Flew in
support of Moreland's own belief in the supernatural, Flew says "my
God is not his. His is Swinburne's. Mine is emphatically not good (or
evil) or interested in human conduct" and does not perform miracles of
any kind. Furthermore, Flew took great care to emphasize repeatedly to
me that:
'My one and only piece of relevant evidence [for an Aristotelian
God] is the apparent impossibility of providing a naturalistic theory
of the origin from DNA of the first reproducing species ... [In fact]
the only reason which I have for beginning to think of believing in a
First Cause god is the impossibility of providing a naturalistic
account of the origin of the first reproducing organisms.'
He cites, in fact, the improbability arguments of Schroeder, which I
have refuted online, and the entire argument to the impossibility of
natural biogenesis I have refuted in a forthcoming article in Biology
& Philosophy.
So what of the claim that Flew was persuaded by the Kalam Cosmological
Argument? Flew "cannot recall" writing any letter to Geivett claiming
"the kalam cosmological argument is a sound argument" for God but he
confesses his memory fails him often now so he can't be sure.
Nevertheless, I specifically asked what Antony thought of the Kalam,
to which he answered:
'If and insofar as it is supposed to prove the existence of a
First Cause of the Big Bang, I have no objection, but this is not at
all the same as a proof of the existence of a spirit and all the rest
of Richard Swinburne's definition of 'God' which is presently accepted
as standard throughout the English speaking and philosophical world.'
Also, regarding another rumor that Flew has been attending Quaker
meetings, Antony says "I have, I think, attended Quaker meetings on at
least 3 or 4 occasions, and one was at the wedding of a cousin," and
thus hardly a religious statement on his part but a family affair.
Nevertheless, for him and his family generally, he says "I think the
main attraction" of Quakerism has been "the lack of doctrines." On the
whole God thing, though, Flew is still examining the articles I sent
him, so he may have more to say in the future."
In light of this, I ask that you publish a retraction. A duplicate of
this letter will be sent to the Associated Press, asking them to
publish a retraction as well. However, if they fail to do so, it
would be in your best interests to do so, as failure to publish a
retraction to such obviously false information could be construed by
those with legal standing to file suit, as libel. The simple fact is,
the man is not sure whether he accepts the possibility of a
mechanistic deity, and does not have the updated data on biology and
biochemestry that even I have access to.. He is merely considering
the possibility, and the spin, and yes it was spin, that the press
placed on this is unacceptable from an ethical standpoint.
Please, print a retraction or at least a clarification.
Sincerely,
Benjamin Allen
