“As people have certainly been influenced by me, I want to
try and correct the enormous damage I may have done.” (Anthony Flew)
The newspapers these days are echoing with these
regret-filled words by Antony Flew, in his time a well-known atheist
philosopher. The 81-year-old British professor of philosophy Flew chose
to become an atheist at the age of 15, and first made a name for himself in the
academic field with a paper published in 1950. In the 54 years that
followed, he defended atheism as a teacher at the universities of Oxford , Aberdeen , Keele and
Reading , at
many American and Canadian universities he visited, in debates, books, lecture
halls and articles. In recent days, however, Flew has announced that he
has abandoned this error and accepts that the universe was created.
The decisive factor in this radical change of view is the
clear and definitive evidence revealed by science on the subject of
creation. Flew realized, in the face of the information-based complexity
of life, that the true origin of life is intelligent design and that the
atheism he had espoused for 66 years was a discredited philosophy.
Flew announced the scientific reasons underlying this change
in belief in these terms:
“Biologists’ investigation of DNA has shown, by the almost
unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce [life],
that intelligence must have been involved.”[1]
“It has become inordinately difficult even to begin to think
about constructing a naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first
reproducing organism.”[2]
“I have been persuaded that it is simply out of the question
that the first living matter evolved out of dead matter and then developed into
an extraordinarily complicated creature.”[3]
The DNA research which Flew cites as a fundamental reason
for his change of opinion has indeed revealed striking facts about
creation. The helix shape of the DNA molecule, its possession of the
genetic code, the nucleotide strings that refute blind chance, the storage of
encyclopedic quantities of information and many other striking findings have
revealed that the structure and functions of this molecule were arranged for
life with a special design. Comments by scientists concerned with DNA
research bear witness to this fact.
Francis Crick, for instance, one of the scientists who
revealed the helix shape of DNA admitted in the face of the findings regarding
DNA that the origin of life indicated a miracle:
An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us
now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the
moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had
to have been satisfied to get it going.[4]
Based on his calculations, Led Adleman of the University of Southern
California in Los
Angeles has stated that one gram of DNA can
store as much information as a trillion compact discs.[5] Gene
Myers, a scientist employed on the Human Genome Project, has said the following
in the face of the miraculous arrangements he witnessed:
“What really astounds me is the architecture of life… The
system is extremely complex. It’s like it was designed… There’s a huge
intelligence there.”[6]
The most striking fact about DNA is that the existence of
the coded genetic information can definitely not be explained in terms of
matter and energy or natural laws. Dr. Werner Gitt, a professor at the
German Federal Institute of Physics and Technology, has said this on the
subject:
A code system is always the result of a mental process… It
should be emphasized that matter as such is unable to generate any code.
All experiences indicate that a thinking being voluntarily exercising his own
free will, cognition, and creativity, is required… There is no known natural
law through which matter can give rise to information, neither is any physical
process or material phenomenon known that can do this.[7]
Creationist scientists and philosophers played a major role
in Flew’s acceptance of intelligent design, backed up by all these
findings. In recent times Flew participated in debates with scientists
and philosophers who were proponents of creation, and exchanged ideas with
them. The final turning point in that process was a discussion organized
by the Institute for Metascientific Research in Texas in May, 2003. Professor Flew
participated in the discussion together with the author, Roy Abraham Varghese,
a physicist, and the molecular biologist, Gerald Schroeder. Flew was
impressed by the weight of the scientific evidence in favor of creation and by
the convincing nature of his opponents’ arguments and abandoned atheism as an
idea in the period following that discussion. In a letter he wrote for
the August-September, 2003, edition of the British magazinePhilosophy Now, he
recommended Schroeder’s book “The Hidden Face of God: Science Reveals the
Ultimate Truth” and Varghese’s book “The Wonderful World.”[8] During
an interview with the professor of philosophy and theology Gary R. Habermas,
who also played a major role in his change of mind,[9] and
also on the video “Has Science Discovered God?” he openly stated that he
believed in intelligent design.
The “Intelligence Pervading the Universe” and the Collapse of Atheism
In the face of all the scientific developments outlined
above, the acceptance of intelligent design by Anthony Flew, famous for
defending atheism for many years, reflects a final scene in the process of
collapse which atheism is being subjected to Modern science has revealed the
existence of an “intelligence pervading the universe,” thus leaving atheism out
of the equation.
In his book “The Hidden Face of God,” Gerald Schroeder, one
of the creationist scientists who influenced Flew, writes:
A single consciousness, a universal wisdom, pervades the
universe. The discoveries of science, those that search the quantum
nature of subatomic matter, have moved us to the brink of a startling
realization: all existence is the expression of this wisdom. In the
laboratories we experience it as information that first physically articulated
as energy and then condensed into the form of matter. Every particle,
every being, from atom to human, appears to represent a level of information,
of wisdom.[10]
Scientific research into both the functioning of the cell
and the subatomic particles of matter has revealed this fact in an indisputable
manner: Life and the universe were brought into being from nothing by the will
of an entity possessed of a superior knowledge and wisdom. There is no
doubt that the possessor of that knowledge and wisdom that designed the
universe at all levels is Almighty God. God reveals these truths in many
verses of the Quran.
Footnotes:
[1] Richard N. Ostling, “Lifelong
atheist changes mind about divine creator,” The Washington Times 10 December
2004; (http://washingtontimes.com/national/20041209-113212-2782r.htm.)
[2] Antony Flew, “Letter from Antony
Flew on Darwinism and Theology,” Philosophy Now;
(http://www.philosophynow.org/issue47/47flew.htm.)
[3] Stuart Wavell and Will Iredale,
“Sorry, says atheist-in-chief, I do believe in God after all,” The Sunday
Times, 12 December 2004; (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1400368,00.html)
[5] John Whitfield, “Physicists plunder
life’s tool chest”, 24 April 2003; (http://www.nature.com/nsu/030421/030421-6.html)
[8] Antony Flew, “Letter from Antony
Flew on Darwinism and Theology,” Philosophy Now;
(http://www.philosophynow.org/issue47/47flew.htm.)
[9] “Atheist Becomes Theist: Exclusive
Interview with Former Atheist Antony Flew;”
(http://www.biola.edu/antonyflew/index.cfm.)
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