Posted by Anthony on December 16, 2007
I don’t remember when I first encountered Antony Flew’s arguments for atheism. I do know that it was primarily Flew’s brand of atheism that I rejected and it was his brand of atheism that I seemed to encounter most often at the time Christian apologetics became one of my passions. I met the news of his change of mind with deep interest and looked forward to the re-release of his ‘God and Philosophy’ which was going to include a new introduction explaining exactly where he now stood and how he got there. I was disappointed with the lack of new information provided by that introduction and it turns out I wasn’t the only one. Flew himself wasn’t satisfied with it.
I first learned that while in France attending an Apologetics Academy led by Dr. John Warwick Montgomery. Presenting at this academy was Dr. Gary Habermas. I had the pleasure of having a couple of good conversations with Dr. Habermas and one of the things I asked him about was Antony Flew’s position. Habermas had held a famous debate about the historicity of the resurrection with Flew and I knew that they kept in touch. In fact, it was Dr. Habermas’s interview with Flew about his new position that had stirred so many atheists into frustration.
Dr. Habermas informed me that Flew was unhappy about how ‘God and Philosophy’ turned out. Soon after returning to the United States, I fired off a letter to Flew imploring him to set the record straight. To my great pleasure, Flew replied and assured me he was already on the case. Clearly, I wasn’t the only one who wanted the skinny. His response, “There is a God: How the world’s most notorious atheist changed his mind” gives us the answers we were looking for. Read the rest of the entry… »
Posted by Anthony on
Herr Professor has redeemed himself slightly in my eyes in his latest reply to one of my posts. He follows my blog very closely so no doubt he will discover this response to his so just a word of reminder to you, sir, that I do not use my blog for discussion and debate. Still, I think his post represents a good faith attempt to answer my question so I shall reply.
First I must really object to his apparent summation of my argument:
So man’s inhumanity to man is supposed to pose a tough problem for atheists, not because it’s so difficult to stop, but because the atheist’s lack of belief in God means he can’t explain why man is sometimes cruel to man. In other words, if God did not exist, we would expect man to behave better.
In Herr Professor’s summation we see a conflation of different theistic arguments. I am not for a minute arguing that because you don’t believe in God that doesn’t mean he can’t explain why man is sometimes cruel to man. I don’t see how you can derive that from my post at all which mainly presents the Christian explanation and asks the atheist for his. Reading arguments into arguments that aren’t really being made is a common problem in these debates. Dear Professor: if you stick with what I actually say instead of what you think I’m saying I think you’ll find our conversations much more productive.
Fortunately, the Professor doesn’t dwell on his mischaracterization and seemingly responds to the substance of my post.
On the agenda is the atheist’s explanation for how it is that humans are so cruel to humans. Note the shared assumption that cruelty is bad. In a future post I’ll demand that my relativist peer defend how under a relativist framework anything is actually bad, but for now I don’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth. He’s acting like there is an absolute moral system even if he assuredly denies that there is one. So let’s take his points:
First of all, the reason why we don’t see genocide among apes (other than man) is because they don’t have ethnic groups, or the intelligence required to establish social networks larger than their immediate habitats.
Surely this begs the question: why don’t they have ethnic groups? This answer is no answer at all. However, the implication is that ethnic groups would promote cruelty if they did exist. That is a curious claim to make and I don’t think there is much to it. The real objection seems to be that intelligence does the trick, not simply ‘ethnicity.’ Later statements seem to corroborate that.
Human intelligence gives us tremendous leverage for our achievements, whether for good or for bad.
I don’t deny this for a minute but does it really answer the problem? I already raised human intelligence in my original post which he responded to. I said:
[Sntjohnny Said:] Yes, we agree that unchecked power is a recipe for disaster, but why should it be? Isn’t it possible that any sufficiently enlightened group of humans would exert their power in humane and benevolent ways?
That an enlightened, non-superstitious, educated inquiry into “a real-world understanding of [human cruelties] causes” actually seems to be Herr Professor’s own conclusion:
The real problem is understanding it in terms that will help us produce better relationships between men. The Christian response–superstitiously attributing bad behavior to a magical “sin nature”–is of no practical help in that regard. To produce a real-world improvement in human behavior, we need a real-world understanding of its causes.
So, it would seem that Herr Professor agrees with the thesis that “any sufficiently enlightened group of humans would exert their power in humane and benevolent ways.” Unfortunately, that takes his argument about intelligence giving us ‘tremendous leverage’ out at the knees, for Herr Professor is advocating that what we really need is even more intelligence… and yet by his argument it would follow that more intelligence would be just even more ability to leverage our achievements, good and bad.
Thus, the really critical question is still left unanswered. ‘Intelligence’ is a smokescreen. The Professor seems to have it backwards. To produce ‘real world improvement’ in human behavior what we really need is regression of our knowledge and intelligence. It would be better for us if we were dumber. It would be worse for us if we were any smarter. But the Professor has a better argument:
Proportion-wise, the amount of cruelty we see in man is not inconsistent with the amount of cruelty we see in nature, and in fact I’d put it down as significantly less, among men, than we might otherwise expect.
So, the Professor’s argument is really thus: “Humans are just as cruel to each other as other species but because of humanity’s ‘intelligence’ the extent of damage that they can do to each other is magnified.”
‘Proportion-wise’ seems to me to be a phrase calling out for measurement. Is it really the case that the more intelligent a species is the more pronounced its achievements, good and bad, and that an examination of dogs, birds, and monkeys, when compared with humans, will show a correlation between the intra-species cruelty and the relative intelligence of that species? I don’t think so at all, but Herr Professor offers a testable hypothesis and I think he should test it. For my part, when I survey a century as bloody as the last and begin to try to generate analogs in the animal kingdom I think the comparisons are very week indeed.
This seems to be the only cogent way to respond but I am unconvinced. This is his best answer but that isn’t where he spends most of his time. He says:
Prejudice, superstition, misunderstanding, intolerance, and so on, are all cognitive by-products of our imperfect intelligence, and they are a too-frequent source of inhumane behavior.
Now, again, we are just going to pass over the tacit acceptance that there is an absolute moral code here… ok, prejudice and superstition is bad… we’ll not talk about how we are going to justify such assessments… we’ll move on.
This correlation between imperfect intelligence and all the bad things he listed goes against his argument that proportion-wise, we humans are about like how the animals are. If this argument were to fly, it should follow that with even more imperfect intelligence such as dogs and apes have, there should be more cruelty in the lower life forms than what we see among humans.
There is also an unsupported assumption at work in the Professor’s line of argumentation. Is it really the case that a perfect intelligence will not engage in prejudice, intolerance, etc? What is the connection between intelligence and prejudice? Why would perfect intelligence eschew intolerance?
In conclusion, Herr Professor’s response raised just a ton more questions and on a couple of critical points seemed to deepen the problem. I don’t know if we want less understanding or more understanding as a strategy to diminish human cruelty. I don’t know why intelligence should stomp out intolerance, especially when he has just argued that intelligence is what allows intolerance to have dramatically more consequences. And I don’t know what basis it is agreed that cruelty is bad in the first place.
Questions, questions, but we can count on The Professor to issue a reply very promptly. 
Posted by Anthony on December 15, 2007
The Bob Dutko show, a radio program out of Detroit Michigan with an apologetics emphasis, has asked me to come on their show on Monday, the 17th of December. This will be in regards to my thoughts on the Golden Compass and the “His Dark Materials” series by Philip Pullman.
This is a link to Bob’s web page and there is a “Listen Live” feature on the left side.
I anticipate being on at 1:00 p.m. EST.
If possible, I will try to get a copy of the program to archive on my site.
Posted by Anthony on December 11, 2007
Now that I got your attention. 
No doubt this tragedy is going to be hashed out along ideological grounds for some time to come. For my part, I’m not very interested in those kinds of conversations, though I do note again how for the atheist, any transgression by an individual seems to be grounds for snide arguments against religion as a whole and Christianity in particular. One of the commenters on my forum thinks that such approaches only occur among the ’simple-minded’ atheists (his characterization) but as the thread I just linked to well illustrates, there is actually a large segment of the atheistic community that doesn’t expend much effort to make distinctions once they get rolling.
No, what I’m interested in is two-fold. In the first place, the Christian religion says that people are by nature sinful and fallen. So it isn’t any surprise to Christians- or it shouldn’t be- when humans do bad things to other humans. We shouldn’t even be surprised when Christians are mean to other Christians. For this reason, though I don’t for a minute believe that atheism was irrelevant to Stalin, Lenin, Mao, and Pol Pot’s atrocities, the really critical ingredient is that it was forgotten or denied that people will tend to do bad things and so no checks and balances were erected that could have countered some of the abuses that followed. Similarly, though there was certainly religious fervor behind events like the Crusades and the Inquisition, the core factor was not ‘religion’ but rather a dangerous centralization of unchecked power.
Now, I have found atheists that will generally agree with this position, though it is usually quickly forgotten when a catalog for true abuses in the name of religion is demanded (and quickly remembered when disavowing the atheistic views of the aforementioned tyrants). However, this isn’t really far enough. Yes, we agree that unchecked power is a recipe for disaster, but why should it be? Isn’t it possible that any sufficiently enlightened group of humans would exert their power in humane and benevolent ways?
The answer to that has got to be a resounding ‘no.’ There is nothing in human history to suggest otherwise and to hope for it is only to invite future destruction.
But what explains that fact? I have never heard of a genocide by the gorillas. Have we found concentration camps erected by dogs? Do the birds establish kingdoms? Where is the Maginot Line erected by honey bees and the equivalent to the great wall of China to keep out the lemur hordes? No, raw brutality towards one’s own entire species seems to be a problem unique to the human race, with or without religion.
But can we generate an explanation for that fact without religion?
When liberal pacifist Reinhold Neibuhr was confronted with the realities that emerged after WW2, he had a change of heart and mind and realized that Original Sin was real. GK Chesterton wrote that Original Sin was the only Christian doctrine that can actually be empirically demonstrated. He said that before the calamities of the 20th century occurred. So sad that the Bolsheviks and Nazis didn’t read their Chesterton! (If they had, and listened, I suppose Neibuhr would have remained liberal.)
The response of these two Christians in the face of human nature’s apparent depravity was to identify it with a doctrine that was already known to them within the Christian community. What is the atheist going to turn to?
Posted by Anthony on December 6, 2007
I am pleased to have made the acquaintance of Terry Hollifield. Terry has a similar life history and similar outlook. We are in different Christian traditions but still have much in common. After checking out what he was about, I decided I’d really like it if he would contribute to my blog. Below is a bio which I copied off his site:
Terry has devoted himself to the study of theology, philosophy, worldviews, and culture for over fifteen years. The desire for this dedication was born out of a personal struggle to find coherence in life and a system of belief consistent with reality.
Spending his early years in a Christian environment, Terry soon found that what he was being taught in the church did not concur with any voices from outside those four walls. He found his entire structure for life crumbling from a bombardment of ideas from all directions. A self-stylized mixture of both secularism and mysticism were quickly replacing what he thought was a firm foundation of Christian truth.
Terry wanted to find out WHAT he believed and WHY he believed it. A period of six years was spent not knowing what the truth was, if it was up to personal belief, or if it existed at all. This was an intense time of searching that led to eastern religions such as Taoism, and western secular thought resulting in near atheism.
Ultimately, God allowed Terry to go through this personal struggle to show him that it is the Christian faith that best fits the facts. He found that Christianity provides consistent, coherent, and livable solutions to life’s biggest questions.
Read the Rest of the Bio
Terry will contribute as much as he sees fit and will sometimes post content that was also on his blog. I should note that though I have my own view on comments to blog entries, Terry might have his own and he is welcome to them.
I’d like all of you to welcome Terry to Sntjohnny.com. To learn more about Terry, check out his home page and blog:
http://www.whatandwhy.org/
http://whatandwhy.wordpress.com/
Posted by Anthony on
So now that I have working comments it seems that I’m going to need a comment policy.
I find that people have different expectations about blogging than I do. I blog basically just to speak my mind on a current topic or if I’m reflecting on something to put it out stream of conscious style. Apparently because of the focus of my ministry, some readers expect the blog to be more than that. The truth is that I invest my time mainly in my discussion forum but because of the power of RSS, etc, I find that what I say on my blog is read more than what is on my forum. Crazy!
However, I still receive comments on the blog, though previous to now it was by email mainly on account of the broken comment situation already mentioned. And sometimes other bloggers who need to browse other blogs for something to write about will post comments hoping or apparently expecting me to reply. But I don’t use my blog that way. As a consequence to how I do use my blog, let me help establish some expectations for readers of it…
- People are free to comment or snipe, but as I do not perceive my blog as a place for discussion, but rather… for lack of a better word… pontificating, commenters should not expect a reply.
- People who want a conversation are invited to my forum. I have added a feature whereby entries on my blog are automatically fed into my forum, so you can always find the blog entry on the forum and you can discuss it there, if you have the courage.
- Obviously, I may respond to comments if I so choose.
- Unlike my forum which is a relative free for all, the blog is, well, mine. If I deem that comments are offensive or ridiculous or parasitic or spammy or just think the poster ugly, I reserve the right to delete or edit them. People who want more freedom may post at my forum where great leniency is allowed for people to make fools of themselves if they so desire.
Here is the link to my forum: http://www.sntjohnny.com/smf
Posted by Anthony on
I have been on three radio stations here of late but I haven’t had a good opportunity to update my web page here to welcome listeners who might be dropping by.
So, first of all, welcome to listeners of ReachFM in Florida! It was good to be on your station again and talk to Bob and Anitra!
Second of all, welcome to listeners of WIBI in the St. Louis/S. Illinois area! It looks like I may be back in the future and I’m looking forward to it.
Finally, a top of the morning to listeners to any of the number of stations belonging to the EMF Broadcasting company! I understand you’ve been listening to my interview all week.
You’ve reached my blog, but I try to put most of my best time on my discussion forum at www.sntjohnny.com/smf
