There is a God
How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind
REVIEW FOR AMAZON
This book is a huge disappointment. It presents scientific arguments for intelligent design but this does not prove the existence of God. A very powerful intelligence is not necessarily God. The intelligence might not even be a conscious being.
People think the God belief is important for it helps us live good lives and makes us feel loved by him. But is something good because God commands it or does God command it because it is good? If something is good because God commands it then God can order us to commit child abuse and still be good. Christians deceitfully claim there is a third option, that God's nature is goodness itself. But this leads to the conclusion that God sees nothing as good unless he values it but his valuing it does not depend on it being good so we are back where we started. If God values something and doesn't care if it is good or not, then he is inventing good. If God commands things because they are good then goodness is independent of him and he cannot be God - he has no authority to command. For God to be God to us, he has to be needed. If good is independent of him then he is not needed. This paragraph is so basic that it entitles us to ignore alleged proofs for God.
The failure of the Christians to prove that God is good means that no proof for a good supreme being or God can work.
The only real proof the book offers for God is the cosmological argument.
The cosmological argument says that nothing causes itself or brings itself into being. It says that the contents of the universe did not make themselves but must have been made by a being that just exists and was not made, an uncaused cause. This being is God.
This argument assumes that God has the power to make things out of nothing. In other words, 0 can be turned into 1. People tend to forget that when something is said to have been made from nothing that it makes no sense to think of nothing as a material of which something can be made. Nothing is nothing and nothing can come from it or be made from it.
The idea of creation out of nothing is plainly a contradiction. Even if it happened we don't understand it. A human cat is not as big of a contradiction for at least a human can exist and so can a cat. But a non-existent human is a bigger contradiction. Creation out of nothing says the non-existent can become the existent. The worst kind of contradiction then is having nothing becoming something.
The idea that the universe made itself is not as absurd. Yet all believers say it is absurd for the universe would need to exist before itself to make itself. A universe making itself is a universe made from something. A universe made from nothing is far more absurd.
If nothing can become something then why can't there be a half and half? Why not a nothing/something? Admitting this is impossible is to admit something cannot come from nothing and no God can make a difference. Nothing becoming something is more absurd than nothing becoming a half-nothing and half-something.
Flew is indicating that God has made the universe by means of miracle. Miracle is not an explanation at all but a cop-out. It is at this point that the cosmological argument fails. Nobody can understand how a miracle happens or how something can come from nothing. So the claim by Flew and the Christians that God is the explanation for the universe is deceit.
The Christians believe that God made matter out of nothing by just commanding it to exist. Is this really making matter? No it is calling on magic to make the matter for you. If God provides no power and makes no input except just ordering then that is magic. It is absurd. If a witch does nothing but command things to come into existence she is not making anything. Either nothing or some power is doing it for her at her request.
If something cannot come from nothing unless it is commanded to come, then did God command himself to exist? He must have. But that would be impossible. If he can make himself, how do we know that all that exists didn't make itself as well?
Creation out of nothing does not mean that God uses his power on nothing to turn it into something. Nothing can't be turned into anything for it is nothing. God does not make out of his own power for that is making out of his power and not out of nothing.
If a power can turn nothing into something then why can't nothing turn itself into something? If some power can make 1=100 it is possible for 1=100 without that power. Why? Because power or not it means 1 can = 100. This is because if it can't, no power can do anything about it!
God made so many unnecessary things. It follows then that if he produced them by miracle we have overwhelming evidence that when Johnny says a miracle put the loaf in his larder he is probably telling the truth. The idea of creation as a miracle leads to so much nonsense.
Miracle and magic are one and the same thing. The religious idea that a dead man can be turned into a live one is no better than princes being turned into frogs. It is just religious bias that makes people pretend there is a difference.
There could be nothing. There should be for it is easier for there to be nothing than something. So if God exists, he was able to go against what should be. This would mean that God is evil. A God that is evil is defective. It does not deserve to be called God.
The cosmological argument, if correct, could only mean that there was an unconscious intelligent spirit. There is no need to imagine it being a conscious being. It would be going beyond the argument, requiring more than the argument required, to say it is a conscious being. And if spirit can exist, spirit can exist without being alive.
Believers might reply that consciousness must come from a conscious God. But if God is conscious and he makes unconscious things then that is not necessarily true. And we would need to know how consciousness is made and how it works to be in a position to argue that consciousness can only come from a conscious God. This we don't know at all.
Atheists are criticised for saying the universe is inexplicable and they don't understand it and saying we should say no more about it. The theist however has to say the same thing. Even if he believes in God he has to say the link between God and how the universe came to be is inexplicable. Neither side has an explanation but the theist has to pretend he does and condemn the atheist for that. This attitude would put anybody off believing in God.
Believers say God is the explanation. This assertion has a nasty implication. It implies that if atheists can't explain how the universe came to be they should leave it alone. In other words, if you don't believe in God then shut up. Belief in God has many dangerous and uncharitable implications. I have consulted http://www.religionislies.com/antonyflew.html.
Flew does nothing to refute the seeming incompatibility between an all-good God letting so much evil and suffering happen. Until that problem is answered, nobody should pay much attention to other arguments for God. It is the essence of compassion for sufferers to worry more about the problem of evil. A doctor may save millions of lives and seem to have killed one baby. You must start with investigating the baby's death before you start to argue what a great man he was. If he killed the baby then he was a fake and doing the good deeds for the sake of his own glory. You owe it to the baby to do that. The suffering we see comes before logical arguments for God. There is no mistake that the suffering is there but there could be mistakes in logical arguments and there is a limit to our intelligence. We might be unable to grasp something that proves our arguments wrong. The concept of God teaches us that God can understand things we will never be able to understand even if we have a brain that is more intelligent than all the brains that ever existed put together. There is a lack of humility in people who claim that it is very likely that there is a God.
If an argument is true and there is another true argument that contradicts then you have a paradox. If one of those arguments was the cosmological argument for God, you would not be able to use it as evidence for God until the paradox is solved.
The book is so unsatisfactory. It is painful to read it knowing it came from a mind that knows so much better!
THE REFUTATION OF THERE IS A GOD
Antony Flew
Antony Flew, who had been Professor of Philosophy at the University of Keele, was the author of the famous essay Theology and Falsification in 1950. He published over thirty books. The most famous of his books were God and Philosophy and The Presumption of Atheism in which he propounded his atheism. Sadly he seems to want to undo his life's work for atheism and philosophy by having produced another very famous book called There is a God published by HarperOne, New York, 2007.
Flew commits himself to the words of wisdom from Socrates: "We must follow the argument wherever it leads" (page 22). Evidently the religions of the world are not doing that very well! Why else is every religion made up of disagreeing factions and why does one religion contradict the others in very serious matters? Why is Jesus a fraud according to Judaism and the God of truth according to Christendom? The religions should be regarded with suspicion.
The preface (page xxi) dwells on atheist Bertrand Russell's sense of loneliness and accepts the thought that this was caused by his atheism. Believers frequently try to make it seem that atheism necessarily or usually has to be a misery. They imply we do others harm if we help them become atheists. What about happy atheists? What about happy believers who don't care if there is a God or not?
Miracles - the problem
Xxi snarls at the Dawkin's view that nobody deserves the name of scientist if he believes in God. If a scientist believes that God is to be loved and obeyed with your entire mind then he is saying that God not science has the final say. If God contradicts science then science must be dumped. A scientist who says God is a plausible scientific theory which can explain all things is talking nonsense and is not being a scientist. The whole point of saying God made all things from nothing is to use miracle, the impossible, as an explanation! If something cannot come from nothing, it explains nothing to say a miracle of God brought something out of nothing. All you are doing is contradicting yourself for there is nothing there for it to be made of. You are tricking people by making it look like you are giving an explanation. It is like saying, God has made a square triangle. How can we explain this? Its a miracle. There is no explanation for what is a contradiction!
If creation is a miracle so what does that mean? It means we should say we don't understand it and say no more. We need to pretend that miracles don't happen even if they do. If we believe in miracle, then what if we do a once for all science experiment? How do we know what we can learn from it if there is any chance a miracle interfered and ruined the results? It may be very unlikely but if miracles happen rarely before they could start becoming regular events or maybe have done.
Believers in miracles have the dishonesty to assume miracles are rare. We don't know if miracles are really rare, assuming miracles happen. If people see the chair coming to life and dancing around the room they are not likely to broadcast it. The believers in miracles complain that atheists assume miracles don't happen. They complain that some people assume they happen so often that they become mad and fanatical. So they want to avoid both extremes.
Why is it bad to assume say that miracles don't happen? Is it because they do? But if you assume miracles are rare, you are possibly assuming that many real miracles did not happen. So why not go a step further and agree with the atheists that all miracles are false? When the believers have to assume to teach us that miracles happen but rarely, why do they think atheists should not assume miracles don't happen at all? Nobody can tell anybody what they should assume for assuming is really like guessing. The fact that they criticise atheists for assuming something they don't like shows that bigotry, haughtiness and acceptance of miracles all go together.
It is more honest to assume with the atheists that miracles don't happen than to assume they occasionally happen. If you believe miracles are rare, you are picking out the miracles you want to believe or that fit your religion and discarding the rest. It is not miracles you care about but what you want to believe. The atheist position has the advantage of avoiding this dishonesty. It is wrong to state things as evidence for your faith when your wish to believe is the real reason to believe not them.
To say a miracle happened is to say something very very serious. It is more serious than saying somebody committed a murder for a murder is natural but a miracle is not natural and very very bizarre. You should not then be assuming they happen at all. You should say you just don't know what kind of error or trickery was involved. Religion just guesses that miracles can't all be error and trickery. The believer will say a miracle occurred in situation A because the witnesses could not be misled or mistaken. This is wrong when they have no case just as convincing that they know was a hoax in which no evidence was left that the witnesses were mistaken or tricked. They just guess that a miracle happened and then they expect us to believe the event was a miracle and evidence for God.
Its bad to assume miracles are common and that miracles are rare. So clearly the only alternative is to assume they never happen. You may say that it is hardly honest to assume that miracles don't happen when many of them may have happened. But then you may say that believers are dishonest for saying miracles sometimes happen for they don't happen or happen more than that. So no matter what you say you can accuse of dishonesty! Anyway, as we have seen, we can't assume miracles may have happened. If you say you should assume nothing one way or the other then you are saying that miracles may happen or may not.
Hume said that no evidence for a miracle is ever sufficient for a miracle is so extraordinary that you need evidence for it that is just as miraculous. This is true. Nature says a bleeding statue is a contradiction. Miracles are contradictions. You would need extreme evidence and perfect evidence before you could justly say such a thing happened. Religion accuses Hume of making an assumption in saying the evidence for miracles is never enough though it is plain he is not making an assumption. You may as well say that it is an assumption that you need very strong watertight evidence to convict somebody of murder for murder is such a serious crime. Believers in miracles are forced to tell the lie that Hume is assuming there isn't good enough evidence by their very belief in miracles. How decent and honest are they? If the miracles happen, whatever is doing them is unworthy of worship.
We need to ignore miracles for the sake of being able to trust the milk in the fridge to remain milk and not turn into blood. Belief in miracle destroys the value and the meaning of science. For Flew to start claiming that science indicates the possibility of God is to make an inexcusable and dangerous mistake. That is making science contradict itself.
Inflewenza
Flew stated on page 2 that he does not believe in an afterlife.
It is good that Flew tries to weed out a fallacious danger in the thought of many philosophers. This thought claims that we can know nothing for sure in matters of philosophy. It claims it on the grounds that there is always somebody who won't be persuaded or convinced (page 41). They think that there is no way to know that one philosopher is right and another wrong. He reminds us that a proof is still a proof even if people don't accept it. Creating a proof is a different thing to persuading a person that the proof works.
Page 46-47 is where Flew mentions the seeming incompatibility of the existence of evil with God. He mentions the view of Mascall that evil counting against God's goodness may not mean that God and evil are incompatible.
I object to Mascall for the evil is so serious that it does mean evil and a perfect God are incompatible. Mascall would make sense if he was thinking of a scenario where the husband's love for his wife is not diminished or to be questioned because of his small mistakes in his treatment of her. Religion and belief in God, whether they mean to or not, trivialise gross evil.
Suppose you have a suspect for a murder who really is guilty of it. Mascall would say that his good deeds will count against his guilt but will still be compatible with his being guilty.
They are not completely compatible with his guilt. In so far as the good deeds do count against his guilt they are incompatible with it. Just because he really was guilty will not prove that the good deeds did not count against it or were not compatible. There is always some doubt when we give evidence for something. What is important is that the evidence be analysed so well that the doubts will be very much diminished and made unimportant.
A man can be guilty but his good deeds can cast some doubt on his guilt. That is because he is an imperfect man. With God it is different because he is supposed to be all-perfect. A single evil that cannot be called tolerable in any sense or be said to have a purpose disproves God even if there is nothing else but good. God himself set a very high standard in the Bible when he said that a predictor of the future who is speaking for him must make no errors at all. One error entitled the people to reject the prophet for God makes no mistakes. Evils are errors - they are what should not be.
Atheism - the default
Page 54, 56 has Flew standing by the view he popularised in his book, The Presumption of Atheism, that when you have believers in God and unbelievers in God debating, the burden of proof is on the believers to prove there is a God to the unbelievers. Unbelief is the default position. Unbelievers are not entitled to disprove God if they don't wish to any more than a disbeliever in the tooth fairy is entitled to disprove it if he or she doesn't want to. It is those who say such entities exist who have the duty to try and prove their existence.
Atheism or unbelief is the default position. This certainly implies that people should start off with unbelief and should not be conditioned to believe from childhood. The baptising of babies with a view to conditioning them as in Roman Catholicism is totally against the rights of the babies. It is an implied insult against unbelief and atheism's right and position to be the default. It is an implied insult against atheists. It follows that religion should accept converts reluctantly instead of taking them in when they can't or don't know all the facts.
Flew states on the same page that atheism's being the default position is the same as innocent until found guilty. There should be no belief in God until you prove there is one. Now your innocence can only be disbelieved in if your guilt is established beyond all reasonable doubt. That must be the case with God too. You must establish his existence beyond all reasonable doubt. You need proof before you have the right to promote faith in God. Otherwise you are like somebody that expects their neighbours to believe the parish priest molested children without providing proof to the neighbours. You may say, "But that is harmful to the priest if the allegation is not true. What harm does it do to promote God without proof? It's not the same thing." It is harmful. It is a different form of the rule that a person must be considered innocent until proven guilty beyond all reasonable doubt. To oppose one is to oppose the other for it is one rule stated differently for different things.
Another reason promoting God without proof is harmful is because it is saying that God is the being that deserves all our love and whose authority must be obeyed and respected so that anybody who does not do this is extremely evil. Logically, it is better to sexually abuse a child than to refuse to acknowledge God. The promotion is malicious at worst and irresponsibly dangerous at best. It cannot be approved of.
Flew mentions Anthony Kenny's claim that agnosticism not atheism is the default position. Now if somebody tells you they have had a vision of an alien saviour who wishes to save the world, the default position is that it is not true, the default position is not agnosticism. If you are agnostic all the time about things you will end up having everything down as 50/50, tooth-fairies and leprechauns and lying visionaries! There will be no rationality! Kenny is wrong but not completely wrong. He just erred in thinking Agnosticism was the main default position.
So atheism or outright rejection of belief in God is the default position. When you sort that one out there is a new default. The new default is Agnosticism.
If you get to that default of Agnosticism then are you obligated to go any further? If you are not obligated to find God and believe in him then he is not God. He is not all-good for he is optional. If food is good then it is not optional - you have to get it and eat some of it. A being that is imperfect or optional cannot be God for he is not in full control and his weaknesses and defects show that there are powers better than him and stronger. If you are obligated then atheism and agnosticism are not the default positions. But they plainly are. If we deny that we will be teaching rubbish as morality and be really bad people. If you have to be bad to believe in God then that shows that God would not leave evidence that he exists at all. If he has to do that and if it is bad to believe in him then he may be an intelligence but he is not a good being and therefore not God.
The good news is that you don't have to get to agnosticism. But if you do you must go back to atheism for your position actually implies that you should. Paradoxically agnosticism in one way implies that atheism is true as we have seen. So you can't go forward, you just go back. But we will show later on the defaults you would have if you could go forward. They are not really options or defaults at all but we will just put them in and examine them for religion says they are options and defaults.
So far we have give a very simplified overview of the defaults. Let us explore them properly. The defaults need to move from total atheism to total belief in an all-good God, step by step. People will criticise this as too narrow and too structured but it is the logical way it has to be done. Logic is structured. Will they criticise maths tables next as being too restrictive?
The biggest default is atheism in the form of: The existence of God is impossible in the same way a square triangle is.
The second biggest default is weaker atheism in the form of God's existence is possible but there are reasons why he cannot exist, ie evil and suffering, so there is definitely no God.
The third biggest default is still weaker atheism in the form of there is very probably no God.
The fourth biggest default is a still weaker atheism again in the form of there is probably no God.
The fifth biggest default is agnosticism or the idea that you can't know if there is a God or not. This can't makes it strong agnosticism.
The sixth biggest default is a weaker form of agnosticism which says that you don't know if there is a God or not - it only says you don't know not that you can't.
The seventh biggest default is a still weaker form of agnosticism which states that you don't need to know if there is a God and this is for factual reasons. You don't need to know it any more than you need to know the name of the person who made the bronze age implement you found in your garden. It is weaker than the previous because it doesn't say if you can know if there is a God or not and doesn't say you don't know only that you don't care any more than you care what colour Abraham Lincoln's tablecloth was. This form doesn't care about God in relation to our thinking he exists.
The eighth biggest default is that not that we ignore God and consider him morally irrelevant but that God himself wants us to be free and loving and not taking any orders from him and judge for ourselves. God of course being almighty can't have any needs and therefore has no rights and so can't order us to worship him and do what he commands. And even if God had a right he could give it up.
The ninth biggest default is practical atheism or practical agnosticism (same thing) in which God is unimportant to our lives and morals even if he commands us to worship and obey him. It is weaker than the previous forms of agnosticism because it doesn't say if you can know if there is a God or not but that you don't care. And it doesn't say you don't know only that you don't care. It says the reason you don't care is because you see no correlation between belief in God and living a good life. This form doesn't care about God in relation to our thinking he exists and also to our lives and morals.
The tenth biggest default is that God probably exists.
The eleventh biggest default is God very probably exists.
The twelfth biggest default is what God definitely exists and is proven.
As we have seen before, because agnosticism indirectly implies there is no God you can't progress beyond the eighth default.
The defaults show that the religious manipulators such as priests and popes and clergy who expect ordinary people to take their word for it that there is a God are cheating those people. To take the testimony of men as sufficient in such a serious matter is really thinking of these men as bigger gods than God! It is idolatry.
Once you get to the tenth and agree that there is a supreme intelligence then more defaults come up.
It is up to the believers to prove that this intelligence is good. They need to have a reason for trying to do this. There is no point in just saying the intelligence is good - learn what good is first. Then God will mean something to you if you find out he exists and is good.
The biggest default position is that it is cannot be known if it is amoral or immoral or good. We start with a kind of agnosticism about if it can be known to be moral, amoral or good. Why? Because we are not talking about whether something exists or not, but about what it is. The second biggest default position is that the intelligence is amoral in the sense of cannot think in terms of right and wrong. The third biggest default position is that the intelligence is amoral in the sense that it doesn't (not cannot) think in terms of right and wrong. Amorality is the second and third for it is fairer to suspect the being of being amoral rather than bad and it is easier for a being to be amoral than bad. The fourth biggest default position is that it is immoral. The fifth that it is probably good. The sixth that it is very probably good. The seventh that it is provably good.
If we put amoral as the default position and immoral as the second and inability to know one way or the other as the third a problem would appear. A question would arise: But if you get to this third step the amorality and the immorality must have been disproved and surely the third step should be that God is good when he is not amoral and when he is not immoral? This would be correct. So that is why we have to put it the way we have done in the previous paragraph.
All these defaults about God existing and about God being good show that people have to try so hard to defend belief in an all-good God that they end up looking desperate. Be an atheist and keep it simple and you won't find yourself looking for a belief that condones the suffering of others. If it were easy to believe in God the condoning would be less bad. But when they have to struggle and come up with excuse after excuse for believing in God, the condoning is just repulsive.
God and cause and effect
Page 57 repudiates the view of Hume that you don't experience cause and effect and can't prove them. Hume didn't believe in God. But if you believe in God you believe God did not create the universe in the past and stop. He has been creating it every moment since. If he stopped, the universe would vanish and there would be nothing. This really means that the ball does not fall to the ground. God creates anew every moment. He creates afresh. So he creates afresh countless times until the ball ends up on the ground. It didn't fall to the ground at all. God made it seem to. It is the same thing as with the silent screen movies. Film tape could be full of separate pictures of a ball being dropped from a hand and falling to the ground. The tape goes through a projector to make it seem that the ball is moving. It actually is not. Each moment of time is like a separate picture and the next moment like the next picture and so on. The God belief obliterates the idea of cause and effect that we need to function in the world.
Free will
Flew admits on page 60, that the idea that our choices are not choices but caused by physical forces and the idea that that they are choices so we could do different from what we do are compatible is wrong. He rejects compatiblism which became popular as a way of explaining how we can have free will despite being subject to deterministic forces.
On page 60 he distinguishes between two different kinds of causes that may have to do with what we decide to do. One is physical cause and it forces us to do things so we are not free. It necessitates. He says if he gives me good news I have the choice of saying whoopee or not. He said I am free to do one or the other. He argues that that if I say he is the cause of my saying whoopee though it is my choice, I can say he caused me to say it. This cause does not necessitate but merely inclines.
This is nonsense. If free will exists, then I caused my saying whoopee not him.
He argues that physical causes such as insanity force us to do things. They are irresistible forces. But he says we have desires and wants and can resist them so they prove we have free will (page 62). This proves nothing. We might be sorely tempted to do wrong and the reason we resist is because we are taken over by a stronger desire than the temptation.
More God nonsense
He mentions Plantinga who said that people do not have any obligation to give reasons for believing in God just as they don't have to have reasons for believing in the world (page 70). This is nonsense for we need to make assumptions about the world but not about God. It is people making assumptions about God that causes all the religious trouble in the world.
Page 86 says that atheists who say that we should not ask for an explanation of how it is that the world exists, it is here and that is all are being dogmatic atheists and being narrow and bigoted. He says that atheists who say they can't accept God as maker of life and prefer to believe the impossible which is that life appeared by chance from matter are as bad.
But if it can't be explained then it can't be explained. The God belief explains nothing. We say that God has no parts but we have no way of testing or ensuring that this idea makes sense. Thinking your way to a God without parts does not mean you are right. Believers say that life can't come from matter. But how do they know if spirit can live? The believers are the ones who are arrogant. If atheists are arrogant they can take pride in the fact that they are less arrogant than the believers.
Page 89 says that when you examine how matter affects other parts of matter that is science but if you ask how the matter came to be that is philosophy. But science may be into theories and verifying them by experiments but it is a form of philosophy and seeking for wisdom and knowledge. Philosophy is replete with theories and experiments too. Philosophy actually has no answer at all for how matter came to be. Nobody can explain how to make matter from nothing. To say God made matter from nothing is to say that 0 can be turned into 1. This either makes no sense or is beyond all comprehension. If we want to claim to be sane then it makes no sense.
Page 92 makes the terrible error of assuming that the God of the Bible matches the best God that philosophy can come up with a spiritual god meaning a God without parts and components who is infinite and all knowing and so on. The God of Christendom is a mongrel. The characteristics of the God of Aristotle and Plato were grafted on to the Bible God. The Bible never says its God is immaterial or without parts. The Bible uses the same word for breath as for spirit indicating that spirit could be a form of undetectable matter. It never uses spirit in the sense that it means today.
Page 99 quotes Einstein saying he was not an atheist and that he thought he was not a pantheist. Einstein then said he thought he was not a pantheist meaning he could have been one but was not sure. A pantheist is pretty close to an atheist for they consider God and nature to be the same.
God the designer?
Page 111 responds to Dawkins argument against God as designer. Dawkins said that if you look at the complicated universe and say the explanation for it is God, the problem is that you are trying to solve the difficult of how the universe came to be by inventing another difficulty, a complicated God.
Flew replies that the idea of a simple God was so easy that the religions of Judaism and Islam and Christianity understood it. Simple means a God who is spirit and who has no parts. We see atoms and know what atoms can do. But we do not understand an atom as an atom. We only understand that if we do certain things with atoms some things will happen. But we don't understand the atoms themselves or how and why they exist. If we cannot understand something we can see and something of which we are made how can we understand spirit? Religion may say spirit is simple but how does it know? Is God simple? He could be intelligent but not a conscious being. Our intelligence still exists when we are unconscious. We don't use it then that is all. But it still exists. If you say God is intelligent and conscious or alive that does not sound like simplicity!
If God is simple then God does not need to be conscious or alive. In fact if he does and is conscious and/or alive then he is not simple. He is not God. But if he is not alive is it proper to describe him as God? Supreme intelligence would be better.
If we describe him as supreme intelligence and not as God, some believers will be saying we have found God but we have just understood him slightly and need to make progress. This is dishonest of them for we could be right for that is all the being is. They are being arrogant and patronising and condescending implying that anybody that knows what they are doing will agree with their ideas. If God is not God but supreme intelligence then religion has an idol that it calls God. They are in the same league as the person who thinks a mobile phone is a person because he hears a voice coming out of it.
Page 114 says the universe according to science carries strong evidence to the effect that it was prepared for us. Suppose we admit it looks that way. Is it decent and right to ignore the pain of a child suffering in agony as a proof that nothing out there cares about us and then to use science to say that something does care? It is like saying that a doctor who saved every life on earth but who killed one baby was a good man when he killed the baby for the scientific evidence for his goodness is nearly proven so he must have a reason we don't know of or can only guess at that justifies what he did. You belittle the baby if you say that. Atheism is simpler in the sense that you don't have to turn intellectual somersaults and justify God and come to great difficulty. When people make such a big effort to believe in God despite suffering or because of it and when it torments them if they reluctantly hate God for letting something bad happen to their baby there is only one conclusion that can be taken. They know it is evil but they condone it. The honour of God is the dishonour of humanity.
It is clergy, preachers, Bibles, theologians and some philosophers who say God has the right to let a baby rot in agony to death. This is people condoning evil they see. Even if God could and does have that right, do people have the right to make assumptions like that? Is it not worse if God can't have that right? Many God-botherers say you should not judge another person but they are judging that God was right to hurt the baby or at least stand by and let the baby suffer. It is certainly disrespectful to say the least when the religious say God was right for it is them saying it not him. Divine authority saying the evil was justified is one thing but human authority saying it is disgraceful - who do they think they are? Humans are not infallible. They say it by their own authority about God. Only God should be saying it. When human authority speaks it speaks primarily not because something is right but because the authority wants it to be right. They want to condone. This is especially bad when they are not the baby!
The cosmological argument
Page 134 talks about the cosmological argument for the existence of God. It says nothing causes itself. God caused the universe and God has no cause. The page says that the argument starts with the fact that the universe is there. It works back to God.
This is the wrong way around. We should start with what God is or what God is not. Why? Because just because there is a universe does not mean that it had to have God as a creator. If it did there would be no need for the argument. So to show the universe had God as a creator we must correct our idea of God and make it our starting point.
So once we have sorted what God is and or isn't out, we should see if our idea of God is not refuted by say the existence of human evil and human and animal suffering. If we end up with an argument that condones what cannot be condoned then our argument is wicked and if we need the likes of it to prove God then we shouldn't be trying to prove God at all. The believers will fail to show that God and the existence of human suffering can be reconciled. So they can't go any further. The very fact that God lets us have so many unruly feelings against our will that make us weak and incline us to evil while others don't have these feelings proves that religion can only solve the problem of evil by callously turning a blind eye to many things.
If the problem of evil is solved, we should see then if this God can create. If creating out of nothing is logically impossible then it follows that God can still be God and not be able to do it. God can only do what is possible. Flew and the Christians can't prove God can create. They simply assume it. That is why their explanation for how things came to be is a deceit for it is not an explanation at all. To say the universe exists therefore God created it is to make an assumption. It is not an argument for God. It is not a reason to believe in God. The cosmological argument sneaks this assumption in so it is not an argument at all. So when they are guessing that God can create it follows that they are guessing that the creation is his work.
Until Christians know what it is like to be God and to create and how it is done they should not be using the cosmological argument.
The cosmological argument is no use without the thought that because there is an infinite distance between something and nothing only an infinite being can make the universe from nothing. But even if such a being existed it would not necessarily be God or like God. God has all power and there is no power but his - he is infinite like that. His power is unlimited and he has all power. But there is another kind of infinite. This power has no beginning and no end but it is not all power. Imagine infinite lines. It is possible for there to exist any number of infinitely long lines in the universe. These lines have infinite power but not unlimited and all power. There can be any number of infinite beings at the one time in this sense. There can only be one infinite and unlimited being who has all power. But there is no need to assume that there is such a being. An infinitely powerful being who is not God could make the universe if there is anything in the cosmological argument. There could be more than one maker! It is better to hold that there are and that many of the creators did a bad job. It makes sense. It means we don't have to coldly step over the body of a stranger who was tortured to death and flippantly say, "God let that happen to him for a justifiable purpose." Curiously, most people who talk about the cosmological argument being correct ignore the issue of infinity which means they are using tricks with facts to make us think there is a God.
If there was only one being made by God and that being was not God but felt like it was, that being could not work out that there must be a God who made it. How does God know he is God? He can't. So God can feel like he is not God. We know we exist but we don't know how we are and how we are made. God should be the same. The cosmological argument can't even help God see there is a God!
If God exists he needs nothing outside himself. He is not supreme if he has needs. The cosmological argument superficially looks like an explanation but it is not for it cannot explain how God can have a power he does not need, the power to create or if creating out of nothing is logically possible. It is a distraction from the real question which is why is there a God when there might have been nothing at all not even God? The question is not why is there something rather than nothing but why is there a God when there might have been no God at all?
The believers in the argument say that God is the reason for his own existence but they don't and can't prove this idea even makes sense. Do they mean God creates himself? Do they mean God causes himself? Do they mean he just is. If he just is then he has not chosen to exist and is not God or supreme. Something he had no control over causes his existence. Luck is more important than him than himself. If they are saying God made himself then that is an even more absurd miracle than creation out of nothing!
Page 140 mentions the argument of some that the cosmological argument for God is wrong on the basis that the alternative is absurd. The alternative is that you could be caused by causes that are caused by different causes that are caused by different causes again and so on and on . .. without end. The book approves of Conway stating that this leaves us with a pile of beings who do not need to exist or beings that might not have existed. This means that there is no explanation. The entire series needs an explanation (page 144) and none is given. And there has to be an explanation. An analogy is given: there is a million computers that get infected with a self-replicating virus. The number of viruses does not explain the existence of the virus. So the number of causes does not explain the causes. All this makes Flew decide that the cosmological argument is correct and that it may not prove God but makes it likely that he exists (page 145).
Page 162 in Appendix A written by Varghese states that the arguments for God says the arguments are not proof. Pages 163 and 183 say it is obvious that matter cannot produce life and life must have come from a living God. That is interesting for if the cosmological argument for God works then it is a proof!
Page 165 says that atheists say that the universe is inexplicable and we shouldn't try to explain but accept this inexplicability. Believers in God, and Varghese says on page 165 that he agrees, reject this logic and say that God is the explanation for the universe. But what about God who is inexplicable? Varghese answers that God is inexplicable to us but not to himself. The thrust of this is that it make some sense to believe in God for it explains things better. But God might be intelligent. God might be alive. But that does not mean that God is conscious or has understanding. He might not understand himself. We do not understand ourselves. We do not know how we know we are alive.
The atheist is criticised for saying the universe is inexplicable and they don't understand it.
The theist is praised for saying the universe is explained by a God they don't understand. So they are saying that the universe has an explicable God as the cause which is saying the universe is inexplicable just as much as the atheist is. They say God and creation are inexplicable to us but God understands them (page 165). So the theist is saying that God can explain the universe and on that ground deny that the universe is inexplicable.
The atheist does not deny that there is an explanation but only says that we don't have it and that is what he means by inexplicable. The believers are saying the same thing but that God has the explanation not us. So why then are the believers insulting atheists for saying the universe is inexplicable? They say it themselves. Both sides say that finding the explanation is possible in theory and both would agree we will never find it or be clever enough or psychic enough. If you believe in God you have to pretend that God is the explanation and insult those who disagree. You are saying that by implication when you believe in God. Belief in God is not as loving as it is made out to be.
The believers don't understand God so why can they say there are other possible explanations such as magic?
Believers say God is the explanation. This assertion has a nasty implication. It implies that if atheists can't explain how the universe came to be they should leave it alone. In other words, if you don't believe in God then shut up. Belief in God has so many vicious and uncharitable implications.
Page 169 and 170 say that atheists who think nothing is unstable and turned into creation are making no sense. They forget the fact that nothing is nothing and can't be unstable. They say these atheists are making no sense. This is true.
Consciousness
Page 182 says there are two kinds of consciousness. Consciousness. Consciousness and thinking.
Thinking is processing information you are aware of. It is being conscious of information and then the next moment of the same information or new information. If you look around the room you are in "without thinking" you will see that you are still processing as in absorbing information. So you are always thinking! When you look around "without thinking" all you have done is be more passive but you are still thinking.
Flew touched in the head?
Flew has been suspected of suffering from some mental weakness for changing his mind about God. Certainly he says now there is a God and makes no effort to deal with the problem of human suffering. That is strange.
Page 185 here Flew speaks of Christianity as the one religion that deserves the most respect and honour even if it is false does not sound like the rational Antony Flew. This is an insult to secular humanism and to every religion on earth and especially coming from somebody that is not a Christian! Flew surely knows that this faith is based on the lies of gospel writers who mutilated and twisted Old Testament texts to make it seem they miraculously predicted Jesus so that we should know he was the Son of God and the Messiah. Surely he knows Christians to this day tell lies to maintain the undeserved prestige of their Jesus. Jesus called his mother woman at a wedding when she asked him to help for the wine had run out. He snapped that the problem had nothing to do with him. Christians say that he was not being disrespectful for he was calling her woman in terms of the promise of God in Genesis that Woman would mother the saviour. So they turn it into an honour not a cold piece of disrespect. Their answer is very implausible. It is like saying that when somebody calls his mother a fucker that it is not fucker he meant but fucker in some other language that means, "Parent who I adore." They say his snap was the truth and it only looks like a snap for the author of the gospel only picked out certain things of what happened and were said that day. The best answer is to take him as rude. Christians would be doing that if it were the Muslim prophet Muhammad in the story not Jesus. They have no business saying they know Jesus never sinned or was rude when that is a possible interpretation of the event. Are they psychic? The simplest understanding is that he was rude. Once you disregard the obvious interpretation and the simplest you go off the track.
How can Flew think that a religion based on a Jesus who said that loving God is the greatest commandment and the second greatest is love of neighbour as oneself deserves special praise? The way God is put first certainly is no better than the idea, love others not yourself or love your neighbour more than yourself. It implies that the worst thing that Jack the Ripper did was not in his killing the women but in how he defied God to do it! The God concept is why religion of God is so intolerant and bigoted and has led to so much blood shed. It warps people. If you expect people to love you as much as they love themselves your life will be full of disappointment and anger. Jesus wants you to feel as much pain as others do when they are bereaved or suffer for if you love others as yourself you will suffer as they suffer. Had Jesus not intended that he would have commanded, "Respect others and be always there to cheerfully help them" which would take away the burdensomeness.
Nutty bishop
Flew's letting the nutty Anglican bishop of Durham, Wright, write Appendix B for the book is bizarre. The Appendix seeks to demonstrate that Jesus probably rose from the dead. Page 199 claims that the Jews of Jesus' time, and before, thought of resurrection as resuscitation of the body or a turning of the body into a luminous body that shines like a star. Wright says that the Christians had a different view which shows that they got it from the real experience of Jesus rising. But then he says that Jesus had a body that could be touched but which was free from pain and death which matches the resuscitation idea. Next we are subjected to arguments so weak and unconvincing and narrow that we have to question Flew's sanity when he wrote that Wright made a good case for the resurrection of Jesus.
Wright say that the gospels could have been written as late the 80's AD. He admits nobody knows and that some experts date them to 90 AD. This forces him to make an eccentric and fanciful and ignorant case for saying this does not matter. He needs to make the problem of the late authorship of the gospels vanish away for accounts appearing long after the event normally can't be taken very seriously. He claims the resurrection stories bear traces of being unchanged from the time of the resurrection. Christians have no choice but to use the kind of methods he uses otherwise all is lost.
He says that it is odd that the New Testament says Jesus rose according to the Old Testament scriptures but never mentions what scriptures from the Old Testament it means (page 206). He says the resurrection stories were early because they appeared before the Church developed a need to satisfy critics that the resurrection was prophesised by the scriptures. But the New Testament would have had certain scriptures in mind and just didn't mention them meaning people should look them up themselves. Wright reads far too much into the silence.
Paul perhaps needed the texts to convince the Jews that Jesus rose in his letters. He didn't use them either. Nothing should be read into the silence except perhaps that the texts don't work and the gospels are lying when they say there are texts that predict the resurrection of Jesus.
The Book of Acts says the apostles used certain texts to make it seem the resurrection was predicted and it quotes those texts. The apostles used them soon after the resurrection. If Wright is consistent then he must dismiss these stories as lies or too legendary. Wright knows his readers are mostly biased to follow Christianity so all he needs to do is make the faith look possibly and or probably true. He knows they won't look too close. This is what theologians and clergy have been doing for centuries.
He says it is odd how the resurrection visions have not been influenced by the narrative in Daniel 12 the only really important resurrection text in the Old Testament which speaks of resurrection bodies as shining like the stars. He argues that this is a sign that these vision stories arose very early and were preserved in the four gospels. The Bible speaks of Jesus shining like a star before his resurrection. It simply for the most part does not say if Jesus shone or not after. However, the Book of Acts shows Wright to be lying to strengthen his case. Acts speaks of Paul seeing Jesus as a light and Paul was left blinded. The Book of Revelation describes the Risen Christ as being full of light and even carrying stars in his hand. The authors could use whatever source they wished about resurrection. Their not using Daniel 12 means nothing. They assumed their readers knew the Old Testament well or could read it. You may as well say that if I don't mention some popular book at this point that debunks the resurrection that I didn't consider that book any good!
He says on page 206 that if the resurrection tales were made up then we can't explain how the inventers put women in as the original witnesses. Women were not regarded as reliable so their being in the story proves the story was not invented but true (page 207). But the gospels were written for people who refused to adhere any longer to the outdated nonsense and unscriptural tradition that a woman was no good as a witness. And besides there were no men about when Jesus supposedly rose and appeared at the start so in a case like that female witnesses were acceptable. The Jews favoured male testimony but they regarded female testimony as highly when there as no male alternative.
He argues on page 208 that the resurrection stories indicate that Jesus was who and what he said he was for he rose and there is no trace of the later idea started by Paul that if Jesus rose we will rise too. Wright takes this silence as evidence of the early origin of the stories. Wright does not take the non-partisan silence about Jesus Christ to be evidence that Jesus never lived. People who should have mentioned Jesus did not. Here he expects short gospel accounts to mention the idea that Jesus rose to show us we will rise too if they were made up. And this despite the fact they had no need to. Perhaps the authors simply never thought of it.
Wright should realise that parapsychologists verify the paranormal have been proven wrong. If they can be wrong despite their powers of observation and reasoning not to mention their training why should we listen to some sketchy accounts from the first century according to which ordinary people supposedly saw the risen Jesus? Eyewitness testimony even on the spot is horrendously unreliable (page 179, God the Failed Hypothesis).
Wright utterly fails to make Christianity credible! How can it ever be credible when the religion is based on the lie that hating the sin is not personal? It feels personal. You hate the sinner in so far as you hate the sinner. You can't wish evil and judgement on a sin but on a sinner! This lie proves that the idea of an all-good God who loves sinners is impossible. Those who say they hate their father's alcoholism though they love him do not mean real hatred. They want to cure the alcoholism and do not see it as something to wish evil and judgement on.
Flew's Deism
Flew is a Deist not a Theist. A Deist believes in a God who makes all things but who does not do miracles, give revelations or answer prayer. A Theist believes in a God who does all these things. Deism is more rational than theism. Theism has the stupid idea that God loves us though he hides himself and that this is good for us for it requires us to have faith and not knowledge. If God is love that means it must be bad for us to know that love. That of course is crazy.
For Christianity Today to award Flew's book and promote it and for Christians to be boasting that Flew agrees with them on God is scandalous. He does not. The God of Deism is not the God of Jesus Christ. Flew does say at the end of the book that God might give revelation for God is all-powerful. Many Deists have said and say the same but they hold there is no convincing evidence that any religion is really based on what God has revealed. Flew has let himself be turned into a banner for a faith when he is not a proper banner at all. The Christian faith is lying and giving false impressions about him.
CONCLUSION
Flew is entitled to become a Deist if he thinks Deism is true. But the main points in his book are only superficially convincing. Atheism is the strongest position and the fairest. My exposure of his delusions and errors will be dismissed as many as atheistic fundamentalism - but it is not dogmatism to be right about him being wrong and to give clear reasons to show that so that people can think for themselves! It is not dogmatism so it is not fundamentalism.
GOD, THE FAILED HYPOTHESIS, HOW SCIENCE SHOWS THAT GOD DOES NOT EXIST, Victor J Stenger, Prometheus Books, New York, 2008
The Cambridge Companion to Atheism, Edited by Michael Martin, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2007
THE LANGUAGE OF BELIEF, A SCIENTIST PRESENTS EVIDENCE FOR BELIEF, Francis S Collins, Free Press, New York ,2006