Sunday, August 11, 2019

There is A God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind by Antony Flew


Jascha Heifetz playing Bach's Chaconne from Partita no. 2 in D minor.



Here's some paintings I created with acryllic on canvas.  I'm more about form and color than concrete subject matter, although I am trying to master watercolors by painting birds. I plan to turn them into post cards for my pen pal friends.









There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His MindThere Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind by Antony Flew
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Philospher and former atheist Antony Flew set the agenda for modern atheism with his 1950 essay "Theology and Falsification" ...in his commitment to "follow the argument wherever it leads" led him to a belief in God as Creator. (From the back of the book)

I had heard of Flew a number years ago because of his radical turn from atheism to deism in his eighties. I love to hear people's arguments as to how they arrive at conclusions and this book does not disappoint. Imminently readable and coherent, this is an excellent book for those with questions about the existence of God, who believe in God and would like to hear intelligent reasons to believe, or people who do not believe in God but are curious as to how someone who was an atheist became convinced of an intelligent creator.

The first part of the book gives Flew's history and why he was an atheist. He comprehensively and clearly gives all the arguments he had for not believing in the existence of a Creator. He also provides other's arguments as well.

The second part discusses his change and the arguments in favor of a creator and the world being intelligently designed.

A couple of things. I thought it was interesting that his basic premise in his atheist years was that people who believe in God must prove there is a God, but no such responsibility rests on atheists to prove that there is no God.

He then provides several reasons how there must be a god, such as the human mind, intelligence and consciousness. The impossibility of evolution producing self-awareness or the ability to love or hate or enjoy our lives. To give it meaning and purpose.

He tackles evolution and points out the fallacy of believing something could come from nothing and imbue it with meaning and purpose. That if we are intelligent, we must have been created by an intelligent First Cause. He deals with the argument that if the universe had a beginning or a creator, than so must God. He shows that we know the universe has a beginning and it doesn't follow that God must have a beginning. There must be a first cause. He lists several laws of nature, such as Newton's first law of motion, namely that an objection at rest will stay at rest unless acted upon by an external and unbalanced force etc..

He argues that we can only exist by the laws that create the environment we live in. These laws had to be in place before we could exist. So how did the universe know that we were coming?

His best illustration involves an experiment a scientist made of monkeys. It was an actual experiment based on the hypothesis that given enough time monkeys would type out a Shakespearean sonnet. I suppose this was to support the idea that anything, no matter how intelligent, could happen by chance.

"A computer was placed in a cage with six monkeys. After one month of hammering away at it...the monkeys produced fifty typed pages-but not a single word (including 'I' or 'a')...

...If we take it that the keyboard has thirty characters...then the likelihood of getting a one-letter word is 30 times 30 times 30, which is 27,000. The likelihood of getting a one-letter word is one chance out of 27.000....

If you took the entire universe and converted it to computer chips...each one weighing a millionth of a gram and had each computer chip able to spin out 488 trials at, say, a million times a second; if you turned the entire universe into these microcomputer chips and these chips were spinning a million times a second random letters, the number of trials you would get since the beginning of time would be 10 to the 90th trials. It would be off again by a factor of 10 to the 600th. You will never get a sonnet by chance. The universe would have to be 10 to the 600th time larger. Yet the world thinks the monkeys can do it every time" (pg. 77)

In addition he points out that natural selection does not positively produce anything. It only eliminates, or tends to eliminate, whatever is not competitive. So how do you arrive at something to begin with through the process of elimination?

He tackles Richard Dawkins' "The Selfish Gene" successfully and acutely.

"Dawkins...labored to discount..the upshot of fifty or more years' work in genetics-the discovery that the observable traits of organisms are for the most part conditioned by the interactions of many genes, while most genes have manifold effects on many such traits...

Then, after insisting that we are all the choiceless creatures of our genes, he infers that we cannot help but share the unlovely personal characteristics of those all-controlling monads."

There are many more arguments such as finding a marble table on the beach, no one would assume it "naturally developed there", or, after millions and millions of years would become conscious, much less self-aware, yet the simplest organism is more complex than a marble table and people believe the people who made the table were developed by chance.

Flew concludes with the perceptive statement that the driving motive behind adhering to evolution is to negate God.

I checked this book out of the library, but then bought it because I want to write in the margins and make highlights.

I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in this subject.


View all my reviews


Inquiring pigeons observing a photographer who was lying on his back to photograph the ceiling.

12 comments:

Brian Joseph said...

Super commentary Sharon. I probably will read this. There is something that I strongly disagree with that I sometimes have trouble understanding. That is the objection to evolution based on religious grounds. If God exists, he obviously created a universe based upon physical laws. These laws are everywhere. Even if miracles do happen, they would be somewhat rare. Evolution would be the product of such physical laws which drive everything else that we see, whether there is a God or no God. Regardless of the fact that I do not believe in God, I do not see the conflict that so many others do.

It sounds like there lots of other really fascinating stuff here too.

Have a great day!

Phyllis Winn said...

Hi Sharon, I enjoyed this review. The pigeon picture at the end was kind of like an exclamation mark to Flew's conclusion. It made me grin. Thank you, God, for being You!!!

Ruth @ with freedom and books said...

(I love listening to your choice of classical music while reading your posts.)

Great points. I was going to question if the author ever discussed his personal reasons for all his time rejecting the truth, but the concluding remark could be the answer. Most of the time I think it isn't ignorance as much as it is rebellion. It could also be arrogance. Most know God exists, but they just don't need Him b/c they trust more in themselves. So for the author to say that the motive of keeping w/ evolution is to go around God, it sounds like a conscience choice, which is a form of arrogance.


P.S. That last photo is so hysterical.

Sharon Wilfong said...

HI Brian!

I probably did not do this book justice and I do hope you read it. I think Flew's point was that physical laws prove a creator. I quote:

"These laws had to be in place before we could exist. So how did the universe know that we were coming?"

The second main point was the impossibility of evolution to produce awareness, since it is not necessary for survival and evolution is limited to perpetuating a species.

I would make a further point: if evolution is about survival of the fittest, than why do we try to keep "the weak" alive? Hitler was right. Children with physical or mental defects should not be allowed to live, but there are people who exist, such as myself, that consider this evil.

Why do I consider this evil if evolution should only produce species that simply want to survive? Does that make me defective? Should I in turn not exist?

Then there are those who choose not to perpetuate our species, those who don't have children or who are homosexual. Are they then defective? After all, if everyone was like that, the human race would end after a generation.

Finally, and thank you for reading my lengthy answer. As a Christian, I believe that the best argument will fall on deaf ears until the God's Holy Spirit opens your eyes and unstops your ears.

I hope I don't embarrass you by telling you that I pray for you daily.

Have a great day and week! God bless you, Brian.

Sharon Wilfong said...

Hi Phyllis! I'm so glad to know you still read my posts. This is such a good book. I think all Christians should read it. If God wants us to reach out to unbelievers, then we should equip ourselves by understanding where they are coming from.

Sharon Wilfong said...

Hi Ruth!

It is absolutely rebellion. We want total autonomy. Isn't that why Eve and Adam ate the fruit, "to be like God"?

Also, I've noticed that, like Flew, people who do not believe in God do not think the responsibility to support their arguments with facts lies on them. That was Flew's stumbling block. He believed God had to be proven, but it is not enough to prove His existence. If He doesn't exist, you must prove that as well.

Have a great week!

Carol said...

Hi Sharon, thanks for the review. I'm reading Schaeffer's 'The God Who is There' and he talks about the tension of being a modern man - he can't live at ease in the area of despair. "To say I am only a machine is one thing; to live consistently as if this were true is quite another."
Another dilemma is personality. No one has ever thought of a way to derive personality from nonpersonal sources.
My daughter is experimenting with 'acrylic pouring.'There are youtube videos galore about the method. I think it wastes too much paint!

Sharon Wilfong said...

HI Carol. I have all of Schaeffer's works and worked through a couple of volumes. He is so relevant even today with his acute observations of mankind and Biblical principals.

Flew deals with the personality conundrum. There is so much more in this book than I was able to adequately cover.

Acrylic pouring sounds really interesting. Like Jackson Pollack's work? He's a favorite of mine.

Sarah @ All The Book Blog Names Are Taken said...

Lovely review, I will be adding this to my TBR for sure! I find these sort of books fascinating.

Sharon Wilfong said...

Because what you need is one more book to add to Mount TBR (just like me. Added two more today and I told myself I was only buying coffee at BAM).

Brian Joseph said...

Hi Sharon. I actually think that it is a nice gesture that you pray for me. Though I do not believe in God I think that it is a warm gesture that you do this.

How evolution led to some of the things that you mention is still open to some debate. As for consciousness Daniel Dennett has written a lot about this. There are several theories but one that seems plausible is that anything with the processing power of the human brain would manifest consciousness as a by product of the complex intelligence. Thus, intelligent computers will be conscious.

As for protecting the weak, I think that our brains evolved with both good and bad tendencies. One good tendency is to protect children even if they are weak as they may eventually grow up stronger. These tendencies are imprecise and sometimes manifest themselves in fuzzy ways. Thus even primitive humans sometimes protected children who had no chance of growing up. As society got better, and we developed more humane ethics, we amplified those good tendencies even when they do not benefit reproduction. Thus, many people today will protect the weak even if there is no benefit to survival. Though I have problems with Richard Dawkins abrasiveness toward people he disagrees with, his theory of memes explains how ideas evolve like genes. Sometimes ideas that do not encourage survival spread successfully because ideas are competing with one another for survival.

I knew that some researchers and theorists have been delving into homosexuality and how it evolved but I have not really followed it. I would guess it is the result of some survival strategy that may occasionally manifest itself in unexpected ways. I would not call homosexuality a defect just like I would not call protecting children with no chance of growing up a defect. Because of memes has moved beyond pure survival. We have reached a point where there are things that are more important then passing on our genes. I believe this happened through natural processes. Though I think that these altruistic tendencies developed naturally, I still think that this part of humanity is noble and is the best thing about us.

Have a great day!

Sharon Wilfong said...

Hi Brian. I appreciate your thoughtful and thorough response, and I know that ultimately we each stand on different axioms.

By that I mean we each believe in a basic premise that we consider self-evident. I believe it is self-evident in the order and nature of things that a creator is the only logical source while you believe that everything evolved by itself.

I will point out that your remark about computers achieving self-consciousness belies the fact that computers did not happen "naturally" but were designed by humans. If a computer had to be designed and is not nearly as complex as even the simplest human gene, why shouldn't humans be designed as well?

I enjoy our discussions. Have a good week!