Famous Atheist Cites Scientific Proof of existence of God

madanthonywayne

Morning in America
Registered Senior Member
I came across this article, seems this guy is pretty prominent among the atheist community and he now believes the evidence supports the existence of God.

Famous Atheist Now Believes in God
One of World's Leading Atheists Now Believes in God, More or Less, Based on Scientific Evidence
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=315976
 
Another landmark was his 1984 "The Presumption of Atheism," playing off the presumption of innocence in criminal law. Flew said the debate over God must begin by presuming atheism, putting the burden of proof on those arguing that God exists.

People dont do this though. They work on the assumption a God exists, and try to work backwards. When theres an all powerful being at work though, can you really work backwards to atheism? Atheism could be a tool for skeptics in trying to work backwards..

Prometheus specializes in skeptical thought, but if his belief upsets people, well "that's too bad," Flew said. "My whole life has been guided by the principle of Plato's Socrates: Follow the evidence, wherever it leads."

If only more people thought like that... if only.
 
TheMatrixIsReal said:
How he could be "famous atheist", then out of the blue start believing in a christian-based theory that has no experimental evidence and not one paper about it has ever been published in a respected scientific journal baffles the mind. The man is obviously going senile.

Or you skimmed the article for something to post that would cast the man in the worst light. Just because one atheist has changed sides, doesnt make the whole atheist argument invalid. He may have followed some of his "evidence" paths to that conclusion, that you cant trace evolution back to the creation of the first self reprodcing organism, and that there was some intervention that allowed them to start the evolutionary journey. It would be the most minimalist view possible in believing in a "god". It's not saying he believes in the Christian God.
 
Well, its easy to be confused, want me to explain your problems?

Are you saying that the physical laws that govern evolution were some how different in the past?
“ It would be the most minimalist view possible in believing in a "god". It's not saying he believes in the Christian God. ”

I wasn't even saying I believe in this theory, I was givening an argument for why he believes in it.
He may have followed some of his "evidence" paths to that conclusion, that you cant trace evolution back to the creation of the first self reprodcing organism, and that there was some intervention that allowed them to start the evolutionary journey.

^^ see my post ^^

Yes, because that's what I said in my post *laff*.

uh...

How he could be "famous atheist", then out of the blue start believing in a christian-based theory that has no experimental evidence and not one paper about it has ever been published in a respected scientific journal baffles the mind. The man is obviously going senile.


okay....


The "most minimalist view", as you put it, would be if I made the answer to every question "god", that doesn't mean it's even remotely correct. How's the weather? God. What's 1+1? God. Did you brush your teeth? God. See, life's easy when your a minimalist.

No. Im starting to doubt your ability to read, so this leads to doubt about your ability to think. The 'most minimalist view' would be that the shape of the universe was altered or created (think 13[?] deminsional string theory) by a being of whatever sort to be hospitable to self replicating life. I dont know how you get something like "Are you saying that the physical laws that govern evolution were some how different in the past?". That statment doesnt logically follow anything I have posted.

Back to the last quoted text, you clearly did not understand my post. Actually, reading back on my posts, I have no fucking clue where you pulled that from.

The "most minimalist view", as you put it, would be if I made the answer to every question "god", that doesn't mean it's even remotely correct. How's the weather? God. What's 1+1? God. Did you brush your teeth? God. See, life's easy when your a minimalist.

That makes no sense. You pulled that one out of some orifice, I dont think I need to mention which. That view would be the most extreme. "How is the weather? The weahter is how god made it" "What is one plus one? Whatever God dictates." "Did you brush your teeth? God Willing!" No, maybe you got this from a previous free thought I threw out there.

You know, the one about arguing existence. In a universe where you argue up from atheism, there is room for disbelief, because you dont know there is a God.

If youre a christian, a muslim, a jew, you start with the assumption that there is a God. From that point, you have to disprove the existence of the supreme being. There are passages in all the books about disbelievers and their fates, and that opens up the arena for games. Such as doubting that your "proof of atheism" is really a proof, because this supreme being set it up so people who dont uphold their faith get fooled by logic and skepticism and go to hell.

His minimilistic view is based on his logic, and his decisions on what is possible in this universe. Not on the bible, or the toran. Its not so much as a "i have faith that if i lead a good life i will go to heaven" belief, more like a "wow life is so complex, its amazing that the molecules could ever come together in such a way that they would spontaneously start replicating themselves and starting the evolutionary chain"

Maybe you could think of it as aliens planting seeds.
 
I think the title is incorrect.
He didn't cite any proof, he simply said that he changed his mind and now thinks there must be an intelligent force behind the first reproducing organism.

"It has become inordinately difficult even to begin to think about constructing a naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first reproducing organism,"

This is hardly worth mentioning other than a bit of intersting trivia.
What it boils down to is this guy was an atheist, and over the years he has not seen scientific evidence that is strong enough to convince him that some sort of intelligence was not involved somehow with creation of original life.

It is no more or less significant than a priest that leaves the priesthood because he is not convinced.

(edited typo)
 
Last edited:
It would still be one man's view.
I would place no more credence in his changing his mind and becomind a Deist than I would his supporting an atheistic view in the first place.

Truth be told, I don't think the jump from Atheist to Diest is really much of a leap to make, anyway.

Diests are saying basically that maybe there is a God, but that is inconsequential to the living of our every days lives anyway, since this God does not interfere with our lives.

The core result of both views is effectively the same, and I agree with that result:
God is irrelevant.
 
Poor confused fool. ;) When you learn how to think, in favor of spewing nonsensical garbage, you can try to argue with me. :)
 
TheMatrixIsReal said:
Yeah, except aliens planting seeds is a physical possibility, some made up invisible god doing it is not.

lol, then you'd have to explain how the aliens were 'created' too! Why isn't it possible that an invisible god did it? That which you call 'natural laws' are also invisible, yet you believe in them. Now shouldn't there be an origin for the lawsof nature too?
 
Yorda said:
That which you call 'natural laws' are also invisible, yet you believe in them.
No, not really.
"Invisible" is a misleading term and skews the reality of the situation.
"Invisible" is something that applies to matter, not concepts.
The "natural laws" are no more "invisible" than, say... mathematics.
They are observable, measurable and can readily be verified through testing.

Can you say that about God?
 
one_raven said:
"Invisible" is something that applies to matter, not concepts.
The "natural laws" are no more "invisible" than, say... mathematics.
They are observable, measurable and can readily be verified through testing.

Yeah, you're right. But even thoughts (concepts) are made of something, visible and observable. It's just that we can "detect" and use these 'energies' only with higher centers in the brain. Matter is only a part of the spectrum of energy which the universe consists of, and only appears as "physical matter" since our eyes and bodies are designed to perceive this 'frequency'.

one_raven said:
Can you say that about God?

I don't know, but can you say that about the center of a black hole?
I think a black hole, this singularity, is an approximately accurate "physical" representation of "God".
 
madanthonywayne said:
I came across this article, seems this guy is pretty prominent among the atheist community and he now believes the evidence supports the existence of God.

Famous Atheist Now Believes in God
One of World's Leading Atheists Now Believes in God, More or Less, Based on Scientific Evidence
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=315976

And here is why ABC and major news media (such as AP) cannot always be blindly trusted...

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

Richard C. Carrier, current Editor in Chief of the Secular Web, tells me that "the internet has now become awash with rumors" that I "have converted to Christianity, or am at least no longer an atheist." Perhaps because I was born too soon to be involved in the internet world I had heard nothing of this rumour. So Mr. Carrier asks me to explain myself in cyberspace. This, with the help of the Internet Infidels, I now attempt.

Those rumours speak false. I remain still what I have been now for over fifty years, a negative atheist. By this I mean that I construe the initial letter in the word 'atheist' in the way in which everyone construes the same initial letter in such words as 'atypical' and 'amoral'. For I still believe that it is impossible either to verify or to falsify - to show to be false - what David Hume in his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion happily described as "the religious hypothesis." The more I contemplate the eschatological teachings of Christianity and Islam the more I wish I could demonstrate their falsity.

I first argued the impossibility in 'Theology and Falsification', a short paper originally published in 1950 and since reprinted over forty times in different places, including translations into German, Italian, Spanish, Danish, Welsh, Finnish and Slovak. The most recent reprint was as part of 'A Golden Jubilee Celebration' in the October/November 2001 issue of the semi-popular British journal Philosophy Now, which the editors of that periodical have graciously allowed the Internet Infidels to publish online: see "Theology & Falsification."

I can suggest only one possible source of the rumours. Several weeks ago I submitted to the Editor of Philo (The Journal of the Society of Humanist Philosophers) a short paper making two points which might well disturb atheists of the more positive kind. The point more relevant here was that it can be entirely rational for believers and negative atheists to respond in quite different ways to the same scientific developments.

We negative atheists are bound to see the Big Bang cosmology as requiring a physical explanation; and that one which, in the nature of the case, may nevertheless be forever inaccessible to human beings. But believers may, equally reasonably, welcome the Big Bang cosmology as tending to confirm their prior belief that "in the beginning" the Universe was created by God.

Again, negative atheists meeting the argument that the fundamental constants of physics would seem to have been 'fine tuned' to make the emergence of mankind possible will first object to the application of either the frequency or the propensity theory of probability 'outside' the Universe, and then go on to ask why omnipotence should have been satisfied to produce a Universe in which the origin and rise of the human race was merely possible rather than absolutely inevitable. But believers are equally bound and, on their opposite assumptions, equally justified in seeing the Fine Tuning Argument as providing impressive confirmation of a fundamental belief shared by all the three great systems of revealed theistic religion - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. For all three are agreed that we human beings are members of a special kind of creatures, made in the image of God and for a purpose intended by God.

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.

Note from the Editor: in accord with Flew's remarks, on how the Fine Tuning Argument by itself leads more readily to agnosticism than to theism or positive atheism, see Richard Carrier's Response to James Hannam's 'In Defense of the Fine Tuning Design Argument' (2001).

Date published: 08/31/2001
Source: http://www.secweb.org/asset.asp?AssetID=138
=====================
 
one_raven said:
Diests are saying basically that maybe there is a God, but that is inconsequential to the living of our every days lives anyway, since this God does not interfere with our lives.

A reasonable statement but not all deist hold a common view. I am a deist only in the fact that there is no proof that there is no God.

My stance is that there most definately is not. But I certainly cannot prove it. So I am perhaps a most minimal diest. I call it being pragmatic. But at best deism is a non spiritual concept.

It is acceptance that we exist. Hence came into existance through some means. That involves creation be it natural or otherwise.

On the other hand I think there is overwhelming evidence to reject each and every God advocated by any religion on earth. They would all demean any actual God that did exist.
 
Tiberius1701 said:
And here is why ABC and major news media (such as AP) cannot always be blindly trusted...

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

.......

The response you posted, is actually two years older than the statement this month by Antony Flew. So, you can trust AP on this one!
 
the trouble with you lot is that you are flapping about trying to explain whether or not a god exists as some kind of supreme being, which has a plan for every one of us. This is based on a christian ideology of a father figure for God cast in our own image. Islam and judaism don't subscribe to any description of God, it is beyond our ability to understand it or give it a name.

The universe that we know is bounded by something which has no form, no time or anything else. Out of this place the universe came into existence but from the point of view of this place the universe can't exist since there is no time to contemplate it or space for it to exist in. Difficult to comprehend, so why should God be so simple. We exist in God, we are part of God, and whatever makes the Universe tick that's God. The most incredible thing the universe seems to have done is to allow the creation of life. Maybe we are just that part of God that's seeking a voice. God knows. Don't cast it in your own image, the universe and everything in it, everything outside the Universe that's God.
 
okconor said:
.
.. the universe and everything in it, everything outside the Universe that's God.
since universe seems to be everywhere and infinite..

could you explain what does "outside of universe" mean?
 
madanthonywayne said:
Famous Atheist Now Believes in God
One of World's Leading Atheists Now Believes in God, More or Less, Based on Scientific Evidence
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=315976
...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 . /quote]


and what created the super inteligence?

so the universe contains forces which we dont know yet,and probably never will,why call it god?
why not just nature?

and if matter cannot be destroyed or created only changed the universe probably always existed,why is that so hard to comprehend?

people use gods to explain the unexplained,why not be honest and say:'we dont know"
 
Q25 said:
...if matter cannot be destroyed or created only changed the universe probably always existed,why is that so hard to comprehend?

We know the universe didn't always exist. We know that the universe exploded outwards and is still growing. Hence, it didn't always exist and it is perfectly plausible that an intelligent being crafted the Universe and gave it the laws of physics that we are discovering.
 
SpicySamosa said:
We know the universe didn't always exist.

Who is this "we" that you speak of?
As far as I understand it, The Big Bang Theory not only is exactly that, a theory, but it says nothing about what may or may not have existed "before" the Big Bang.

It also says nothing about what may or may not be outside our observable limits (for example, 50 Billion light-years away).
 
We know that the universe exploded outwards and is still growing. Hence, it didn't always exist and it is perfectly plausible that an intelligent being crafted the Universe and gave it the laws of physics that we are discovering.
 
Back
Top