Anthony Flew on Why He Became a Deist

Anthony Flew, the world's greatest athiest, was one of the last true philosophical athiests (as opposed to the "new" atheists who belong to the religion of fundamaterialism). He was not wed to any particular ideas, but was willing to follow the evidence and argumentation wherever it led.



Journalist and well known advocate for Christianity Lee Strobel interviews Anthony here regarding his conversion from atheism to deism. What prompted the change? The very thing the new atheists oppost most vehemently: intelligent design. The design in nature and more importantly the design in life is undeniable to anyone with intellectual honesty. To put it simply: life could in no way arise through natural processes, it had to be created by a very powerful intelligent agent (the odds of all the proteins necessary for a cell to spontaneously arise through stochastic processes on the early Earth is something like 1 in 10^4000, or completely impossible even if the universe was around for trillions of years).



The video is 18 minutes long and more than worth your time.

Is There Enough Time For Humans to Have Evolved From Apes?

Dr. Ann Gauger explains why experiments with changing proteins reveal that it is mathematically impossible for an ape-like ancestor to turn into a human in well over the age of the universe, let alone a few million years.

A Short Quiz on Intelligent Design

VJ Torley at UD posts a ten question quiz for proponents and opponents of ID. Here are the questions and my answers.



1. On a scale of 0 (diehard disbeliever) to 10 (firm believer), how would you rate your level of belief in Intelligent Design? (Minimal Definition of Intelligent Design: The idea that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, and not by an undirected process.)



Update: When I say “certain features”, I mean, “certain generic features of the universe-as-a-whole (e.g. constants of Nature) and of living things in general (e.g. the specified complexity of DNA”. When I say “an undirected process” I mean a process lacking long-range foresight.



10



2. What do you regard as the best argument for Intelligent Design?



I really like cosmological fine-tuning, because I like very large numbers. I also like that there is no mathematical model for “natural selection” (it is such a nebulous concept, existing in whatever form is most convenient at the time, that I doubt it can have a mathematical model or that it even meets the criteria of science). Mutations not producing new genetic information (where did information come from in the first place then?) and life not being able to self-assemble (abiogenesis) are also good ones.



3. What do you regard as the best argument against Intelligent Design?



Suboptimality (the designer either does not no how to, cannot, or will not design an optimal world for what reason(s)?). Actually, this is not an argument against ID, just certain assumptions about the nature of the designer. That said I can’t think of any counter arguments I think are good.



4. I’d like you to think about the arguments for Intelligent Design. Obviously they’re not perfect. Exactly where do you think these arguments need the most work, to make them more effective?



Perform A LOT MORE experiments, which necessarily entails mainstream science opening up to the possibility of ID. I would also like to see more atheist/agnostic ID proponents, or even just more non-Christian ID proponents (or at least Christians who don’t quote the Bible as scientific evidence).



5. Now I’d like you to think about the arguments against Intelligent Design. Obviously they could be improved. Exactly where do you think these arguments need the most work, to make them more effective?



Stop with the snarky cheap shots like talking about ID versus “real” science or claming that it is religion or the “overwhelming evidence” for RM+NS that is genuine evidence but nowhere near “overwhelming”, nor is it “fact” or demonstrated as well as gravity. Either rebut ID on purely scientific grounds or admit you don’t like it for religious reasons and that’s why you attack ID proponents.


Demonstrating that life can self-assemble, or at least that all the proteins needed for life can self-assemble. Demonstrating that random processes can produce completely new information, not just delete or rearrange pre-existing information in a genome.



6. (a) If you’re an ID advocate or supporter, what do you think is the least bad of the various alternatives that have been proposed to Intelligent Design, as explanations for the specified complexity found in living things and in the laws of the cosmos? (e.g. The multiverse [restricted or unrestricted?]; Platonism; the laws of the cosmos hold necessarily, and they necessarily favor life; pure chance; time is an illusion, so CSI doesn’t increase over time.)



(b) If you’re an ID opponent or skeptic, can you name some explanations for life and the cosmos that you would regard as even more irrational than Intelligent Design? (e.g. Everything popped into existence out of absolutely nothing; the future created the past; every logically possible world exists out there somewhere; I am the only being in the cosmos and the external world is an illusion requiring no explanation; only minds are real, so the physical universe is an illusion requiring no explanation.)



(a) I don’t think there are any acceptable alternatives that are purely materialistic. I suppose if I had to choose I would say that the alternative I see as best is that the future act as a teleological attractor to the past, guiding the evolution of forms in the past to a predetermined future (I’ve read this somewhere).

Richard Dawkins is Right

About one issue in particular. I still disagree with him on practically everything else in the entire universe.



Apparently some broad got propositioned in an elevator at some conference, like that doesn't happen every day everywhere in the world and throughout all of human history and forever into the future (except the elevator part, which wasn't invented until the 19th century, although there were elevator-like transport sysems in place for thousands of years prior). The two most liked comments on that video sum up public, and my own, sentiment pretty well that this is a total load of horseshit and nothing wrong happened at all. As an outspoken atheist she should be flattered that he was (supposedly) just following what Darwin said, because it demonstrates that the cock and balls fairy story of Darwinism is right, or at least can be seen in that light if you choose to believe in that stuff (I don't, but as an outspoken media atheist fundamaterialist spep-dick she has to believe it, so of course she should be happy to see Darwinian principles in action!). After this complete and total non-event Dick-to-the-Dawk-to-the-PhD said this:



The man in the elevator didn't physically touch her, didn't attempt to bar her way out of the elevator, didn't even use foul language at her. He spoke some words to her. Just words. She no doubt replied with words. That was that. Words. Only words, and apparently quite polite words at that....Rebecca's feeling that the man's proposition was 'creepy' was her own interpretation of his behavior, presumably not his. She was probably offended to about the same extent as I am offended if a man gets into an elevator with me chewing gum. But he does me no physical damage and I simply grin and bear it until either I or he gets out of the elevator. It would be different if he physically attacked me.



And with that I finally found something to agree with Dawkins on! Never did I think that would ever happen.



Unfortunately, modern society is run by the New World Order and they are making people kowtow to pussies who are professional victims and it's not politically correct to say "shut up and deal with it," when either someone gets injured through their own stupidity or the laws of nature are percieved to be unfair.



Thank you, Mr. Dawkins, for being the voice of reason in this insane world (about this one issue, although I still think your other claims are asinine).

Balking Someone

Up on The Procrustean we see a piece on Roger Penrose's new aeons of time cosmology, which I alluded to in Georg Cantor's Infinities Part Two. Basically here's what aeons of time is:



"after all the matter in the universe is swallowed up by black holes, and after they evapourate leaving behind nothing but photons, everything gets bigger and somehow the universe starts over again, forever."



Using data from sophisticated equipment, Penrose has claimed to have found irregularities in the CMB (cosmic microwave background) that could only be produced if his aeons of time cosmology were correct. However, the supporters of the various inflationary models also claim the data corresponds to precisely what would be expected if inflation occurred. Since the aeons of time and cosmic inflation are incompatable one or both of them has to be wrong (about the data found in the CMB and in general).



After reporting this, Rob at The Procrustean then makes a conclusion about Penrose, inflation, and intelligent design. He says (this whole issue is a bit of a head scratcher for me so I'll just point you in the right direction and let you figure this out for yourself):



"Neither Sir Roger nor the conventional inflationary models have made solid predictions. At best, they can be tweaked to some, but not all aspects of the data. They possess far too many adjustable parameters drawn from some sort of metaphysical repository of models that is itself questionable. Sir Roger attempts to address the metaphysical problem with Creation, and inflationary models address the metaphysical problem of contingency. Neither is particularly convincing. (And a closer look at CCC theory raise more questions about the infinite pressure of dark energy, the rescaling time, the supposed decay of protons and electrons, etc.)



"Which may mean that it is time to assess the situation. Some of the best minds of two generations have addressed cosmology since the discovery of the 3-degree blackbody CMB radiation and not found solutions to the twin problems of a necessary Creator and a necessary Design. Given their failure, and I do mean abject failure to find anything beyond a metaphysical black box with lots of dials, I would suggest that we claim support for the contrary. All of them have put the cart before the horse, trying to create a no-beginning-no-design theory by massaging the data, post-dicting their data to support their theory, and still have not succeeded, thereby proving the very thing they did not want to prove."



I'm not so sure I would jump from Penrose and inflation being wrong to the alternative being correct, but it does give one something to think about.



-Dee

Theistic Science Fiction

I posted the following on UD, which despite its hostility toward certain issues and sometimes masquerading Christianity for ID does occasionally have some good science. It's in response to the question "why are so many atheists into science fiction?"

I’m a theistic science fiction witer, or to be more accurate I’m a theist who writes science fiction, among other things. There seems to be nothing intrinsically atheistic or theistic about science fiction that would lead me to see why one group would be more attracted to it over the other, if, indeed, that is the case, I don’t know. I suppose if I were to have to make a choice I would say that the allure of “science” or the air of “science,” what Ken Wilber calls “narrow science,” is appealing to atheists because it serves as an alternative to God and gives them a sense of authority. “Science” (hardcore materialism) has become the sort of gatekeeper of all that is real in the modern world, for various complicated reasons too many to go in to here. Without a belief in God (used as broadly or narrowly as you choose) one still has to believe in something, and that something might as well be “science” as the new world authority.

Moving on to the fiction part, well, humans are remarkable storytellers. Everything is a story, built up around facts. Facts in themselves are just pieces floating around waiting to be attached to a story that explains how they all fit together. For an atheist instead of writing about God why not write about the new authority, “science?”

Of course all this is speculation; the ramblings of a man with too much to say and too small an audience.

-Dee

Darwin and Dawkins Dilemma: Climbing Mt. Improbable

A clip from the new film Darwin's Dilemma.


Richard Dawkins has famously elaborated on Darwin's theory of natural selection, arguing that through a slow incremental process, evolution can explain the rise of new species. The new film, Darwin's Dilemma shows where Dawkins goes wrong. Growing evidence suggests that the creation of novel genetic information requires intelligence, and thus the burst of genetic information during the Cambrian Explosion provides convincing evidence that animal life is the product of intelligent design rather than a blind undirected process like natural selection.