World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind

This interview happened late last year but I think it’s worth bringing up again. Notice at the end of this paragraph that Flew says it was the evidence that changed his mind. Theists like me are often accused of ignoring the evidence and clinging to our cherished beliefs in spite of the evidence. But the truth is that it is the atheists that behave this way. Someone has said that it takes much more faith to be an atheist than a theist and this is true. Here’s an extract from the interview with Flew …

“There were two factors in particular that were decisive [in changing my mind]. One was my growing empathy with the insight of Einstein and other noted scientists that there had to be an Intelligence behind the integrated complexity of the physical Universe. The second was my own insight that the integrated complexity of life itself – which is far more complex than the physical Universe – can only be explained in terms of an Intelligent Source. I believe that the origin of life and reproduction simply cannot be explained from a biological standpoint despite numerous efforts to do so. With every passing year, the more that was discovered about the richness and inherent intelligence of life, the less it seemed likely that a chemical soup could magically generate the genetic code. The difference between life and non-life, it became apparent to me, was ontological and not chemical. The best confirmation of this radical gulf is Richard Dawkins’ comical effort to argue in The God Delusion that the origin of life can be attributed to a “lucky chance.” If that’s the best argument you have, then the game is over. No, I did not hear a Voice. It was the evidence itself that led me to this conclusion.
http://www.tothesource.org/10_30_2007/10_30_2007.htm

2 Responses to “World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind”

  1. lordkalvan says:

    To simplify Dawkins’ argument in ‘The God Delusion’ concerning the origin of life as that of a “lucky chance” is to misunderstand it if, as I presume, Flew is deriving his assertion from that section in Chapter 4 dealing with ‘The Anthropic Principle: Planetary Version’. Here Dawkins convincingly argues the case for the likelihood of life originating somewhere in the Universe on the basis of simple probability using an almost vanishingly small magnitude of improbability. The “lucky chance” misinterpretation seems to be founded solely on this hypothetical case which assumes that the probability that life will occur as a result of natural processes is so vanishingly small as to appear ‘impossible’ to anyone unversed in an understanding of how large numbers operate statistically. In contrast to the “lucky chance” accusation, implying that Dawkins believes life to be the result of an improbable accident, Dawkins specifically states that:

    ‘I do not for a moment believe the origin of life was anywhere near so improbable in practice.”

    Flew has either misunderstood Dawkins (whether deliberately or otherwise, I do not know) or else he has not read ‘The God Delusion’ carefully enough. Have you?

  2. porzitski says:

    I have to say that is the biggest pile of hooey disguised as rational thought that I’ve seen here so far. If the vanishingly small chance actually occurring is anything other than lucky chance, I’m a Hobbit. I don’t understand how Dawkins’ statement “I do not for a moment believe the origin of life was anywhere near so improbable in practice” refutes anything Flew said or wrote – it is merely a statement of Dawkins’ belief that DESPITE the evidence (vanishingly small chance), he didn’t believe it was so vanishingly small. Dogmatic to the end.