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i believe his exact words were "far fetched, fool of holes..." and btw, that quote was bolded
Ok. This is the exact kind of thing I've been waiting for from Joch. I can't sit there and toss bible verses and Psalms back and forth, but if he wants to have an honest debate on the theory of evolution, lets have at it.
You were saying there are holes?
i believe his exact words were "far fetched, fool of holes..." and btw, that quote was bolded
How adaptive radiation? The Galapogos Islands are an excellent example of form fitting function.
Mr. Flew Says:
One of World's Leading Atheists Now Believes in God, More or Less, Based on Scientific Evidence..
NEW YORK Dec 9, 2004 — A British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion of atheism for more than a half-century has changed his mind. He now believes in God more or less based on scientific evidence, and says so on a video released Thursday.
At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature, Flew said in a telephone interview from England.
Flew said he's best labeled a deist like Thomas Jefferson, whose God was not actively involved in people's lives.
"I'm thinking of a God very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam, because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins," he said. "It could be a person in the sense of a being that has intelligence and a purpose, I suppose."
Flew first made his mark with the 1950 article "Theology and Falsification," based on a paper for the Socratic Club, a weekly Oxford religious forum led by writer and Christian thinker C.S. Lewis.
Over the years, Flew proclaimed the lack of evidence for God while teaching at Oxford, Aberdeen, Keele, and Reading universities in Britain, in visits to numerous U.S. and Canadian campuses and in books, articles, lectures and debates.
There was no one moment of change but a gradual conclusion over recent months for Flew, a spry man who still does not believe in an afterlife.
Yet 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," Flew says in the new video, "Has Science Discovered God?"
The video draws from a New York discussion last May organized by author Roy Abraham Varghese's Ins ute for Metascientific Research in Garland, Texas. Participants were Flew; Varghese; Israeli physicist Gerald Schroeder, an Orthodox Jew; and Roman Catholic philosopher John Haldane of Scotland's University of St. Andrews.
The first hint of Flew's turn was a letter to the August-September issue of Britain's Philosophy Now magazine. "It has become inordinately difficult even to begin to think about constructing a naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first reproducing organism," he wrote.
The letter commended arguments in Schroeder's "The Hidden Face of God" and "The Wonder of the World" by Varghese, an Eastern Rite Catholic layman.
This week, Flew finished writing the first formal account of his new outlook for the introduction to a new edition of his "God and Philosophy," scheduled for release next year by Prometheus Press.
Prometheus specializes in skeptical thought, but if his belief upsets people, well "that's too bad," Flew said. "My whole life has been guided by the principle of Plato's Socrates: Follow the evidence, wherever it leads."
Last week, Richard Carrier, a writer and Columbia University graduate student, posted new material based on correspondence with Flew on the atheistic www.infidels.org Web page. Carrier assured atheists that Flew accepts only a "minimal God" and believes in no afterlife.
Flew's "name and stature are big. Whenever you hear people talk about atheists, Flew always comes up," Carrier said. Still, when it comes to Flew's reversal, "apart from curiosity, I don't think it's like a big deal."
Flew told The Associated Press his current ideas have some similarity with American "intelligent design" theorists, who see evidence for a guiding force in the construction of the universe. He accepts Darwinian evolution but doubts it can explain the ultimate origins of life.
A Methodist minister's son, Flew became an atheist at 15.
Early in his career, he argued that no conceivable events could cons ute proof against God for believers, so skeptics were right to wonder whether the concept of God meant anything at all.
Another landmark was his 1984 "The Presumption of Atheism," playing off the presumption of innocence in criminal law. Flew said the debate over God must begin by presuming atheism, putting the burden of proof on those arguing that God exists.
hey it's his words not mine.. I am pretty nuetral on the subject, but I find his comments interesting..
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=315976
As I said before, to believe we evolve from a unicelular acuatic life form is as difficult as to believe in Creation.
Except that there is physical evidence for one, and there is none for the other.
You mean, the stork didn't bring me?
They sure are. But you are talking about small changes within similar species, whereas the radical evolution of the origins of some species are more than genetic variation and mutation can account for in the alotted amount of time given by radiocarbon dating.
I'm not saying that I don't believe in evolution; I do. But strict Darwinian accounts of evolution are not accountable in a lot of situations. Something else was at work, like an event that causes massive mutations. (many different times)
Walk me through the evidence where we basically come from nothing
I'd like to read recent a paper from the literature that comes to this conclusion, if you'd like to provide a link
Well strictly darwinian accounts of evolution were thrown out a few decades ago...And the common text books even admit there is no one real 'theory of evolution' because there are so many possibilities
There is a theory that says evolution continuosly occurs gradually within all species (i suppose the rate could be altered by levels of compe ion, etc) but theres another that says species go through long periods of little change then short periods of drastic change
Yes, we don't have hardcore evidence or reasons for this. But if we were able to perform multi-lifetime long experiments, I think we'd find evidence supporting it.
You were talking about adaptive radiation being only small changes within a species, but you have to stop and think...what is a species? What seperates a galapogos finch from a galapagos turtle?
What we call species, genus, sub species, its all just words humans have created to work out how what-is-related-to-what and how closely.
That adaptive radiation can be observed does support the theory of evolution, regardless of how small the change, regardless of how closely related the species involved. Because when we perform longer experiments, with organisms further apart on the family tree, the results seem to agree with evolution as well.
So far, we're hearing stuff about "the more we find out, the more complex it is, intelligent design must exist" Well this is a valid assumption, but i've yet to see series of legitamite experiments which totally disprove the theory of evolution.
I wouldn't call myself pro-evolution or whatnot, but I am a biology major and I would LOVE to start reading stuff about how evolution is being proven wrong...the deal is that this has yet to happen, and the thousands of scientific articles and papers written seem to all support a phenomena out there very close to our current theory or theories of evolution.
You didn't equate creationism in your above post to coming form nothing. You said:
There is evidence to support the development of multicelluar organisms from unicellular organisms. Do you need me to find it for you?As I said before, to believe we evolve from a unicelular acuatic life form is as difficult as to believe in Creation.
The funny thing about this is that intelligent design uses evolution in its explanation.
i think its one of the funniest things ever
why its pointless to argue with a RRWinger, they just dont believe it and they never will
LOL exactly
Walk me through the evidence that Jesus Christ is the (only) Son of God.
Please.
hey! this is a discussion about evolution, not about how un-american you can be! (j/k)
i knew jocchhehejaama wouldn't post in here....what a taint
Take the unicelluar organisms one step backwards and you will find those came from nothing. That was my point.
Show me the evidence where man as we know it today evolved from those multicelular organisms, which in turn had evolved from the unicelular organisms, which inturn appeared on Earth from nothing. Evidence, not theory.
what does it mean to be human?
I don't deny that organisms evolve. I simply believe there is a puppetmaster behind the puppets.
Actually, you have to take it a few steps backward. You may want to read up on the theories before trying to argue against them
You want me to draw out the entire lineage of organisms from Human Sapiens Sapiens to protein strands? Jesus H. Christ!Show me the evidence where man as we know it today evolved from those multicelular organisms, which in turn had evolved from the unicelular organisms, which inturn appeared on Earth from nothing. Evidence, not theory.
Before I do this, I want to know your exact position. Are you a proponent of creationism in a literal sense, a proponent of intelligent design, or another theory all together?
i believe in a heavenly father and evolution
whats the big deal?
I can't. The evidence is in my heart. It's very difficult to explain faith.
Man, I missed you GON.
In evoltion we would have had to have come from nothing, because there is no explanation that explains how everything started.
So then, you have no problem with the theory of evolution. So why the faux arguements against it? Your problem is with the theory on the orgin of life, which is largely an unknown.
If you want to argue on that, we can, but the fact is I'm not sure how life came about and I don't think many scienctists say they are. It is an unknown. There is speculation and there are theories, but there is no widley accepted theory on the scale of evolution.
So can I use that same explanation for my believing that life wasn't created by some higher being.
It is kind of funny, because intelligent design doens't take into consideration that it doesn't explain how God was created either. People fault evolution because it requires something from nothing, but so does intelligent design!
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