Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Greg or e who wrote (19326)	3/6/2005 1:22:07 PM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

I am happy to hear your admission that you believe in demonic possession! You have just admitted to a superstitious mentality which mocks any past or future attempts you may make to any objective perspective in argument! I am pleased to hear it from your own mouth! "All of this is simply a diversion on your part" The diversion is all on your side. Everything we discuss (in the last instance being "demons" and what "Jesus" believed) you bring up the irrelevancy of Mr. Flew. Just for the record (once again)...the most Mr. Flew has ever questioned is the possibility of an IMPERSONAL force. As the following shows...Mr. Flew is 82 years old and is increasingly unable to engage in sound science or philosophical inquiry. from Richard Carrier Update (January 2005) Antony Flew has retracted one of his recent assertions. In a letter to me dated 29 December 2004, Flew concedes: "I now realize that I have made a fool of myself by believing that there were no presentable theories of the development of inanimate matter up to the first living creature capable of reproduction." He blames his error on being "misled" by Richard Dawkins because Dawkins "has never been reported as referring to any promising work on the production of a theory of the development of living matter," even though this is false (e.g., Richard Dawkins and L. D. Hurst, "Evolutionary Chemistry: Life in a Test Tube," Nature 357: pp. 198-199, 21 May 1992) and hardly relevant: it was Flew's responsibility to check the state of the field (there are several books by actual protobiologists published in just the last five years), rather than wait for the chance possibility that one particular evolutionist would write on the subject. Now that he has done what he was supposed to do in the first place, he has retracted his false statement about the current state of protobiological science. Flew also makes another admission: "I have been mistaught by Gerald Schroeder." He says "it was precisely because he appeared to be so well qualified as a physicist (which I am not) that I was never inclined to question what he said about physics." Apart from his unreasonable plan of trusting a physicist on the subject of biochemistry (after all, the relevant field is biochemistry, not physics--yet it would seem Flew does not recognize the difference), this attitude seems to pervade Flew's method of truthseeking, of looking to a single author for authoritative information and never checking their claims (or, as in the case of Dawkins, presumed lack of claims). As Flew admitted to me, and to Stuart Wavell of the London Times, and Duncan Crary of the Humanist Network News, he has not made any effort to check up on the current state of things in any relevant field (see "No Longer Atheist, Flew Stands by 'Presumption of Atheism'" and "In the Beginning There Was Something"). Flew has thus abandoned the very standards of inquiry that led the rest of us to atheism. It would seem the only way to God is to jettison responsible scholarship. Despite all this, Flew has not retracted his belief in God, as far as I can tell. But in response to theists citing him in their favor, Flew strangely calls his "recent very modest defection from my previous unbelief" a "more radical form of unbelief," and implies that the concept of God might actually be self-refuting, for "surely there is material here for a new and more fundamental challenge to the very conception of God as an omnipotent spirit," but, Flew says, "I am just too old at the age of nearly 82 to initiate and conduct a major and super radical controversy about the conceivability of the putative concept of God as a spirit." This would appear to be his excuse for everything: he won't investigate the evidence because it's too hard. Yet he will declare beliefs in the absence of proper inquiry. Theists would do well to drop the example of Flew. Because his willfully sloppy scholarship can only help to make belief look ridiculous. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What do you think? You can post your comments on this article in the Secular Web Feedback Forum. Interested in publishing on the Secular Web? See the Submission Guidelines. Disclaimer: Feature articles represent the viewpoint of their authors and should not be taken as necessarily representative of the viewpoint of the Internet Infidels and/or the Secular Web. Full disclaimer here. Copyright 2004, Internet Infidels, Inc. Copyright info here. Date published: 10/10/2004