Update on my recent blog entry about Antony Flew:
The Raving Atheist published an unhelpful satirical piece, and in a comment to this someone posted a link to an interview between Flew and the philosopher/theologian Gary Habermas. In the interview, Flew accepts Habermas’ description of him as a “deist”, in the tradition of Thomas Jefferson and other 18th century thinkers.
Perhaps the most disheartening statement by Flew was this: I am very much impressed with physicist Gerald Schroeder�s comments on Genesis 1. [in Schroeder’s The Science of God: The Convergence of Scientific and Biblical Wisdom] That this biblical account might be scientifically accurate raises the possibility that it is revelation. The idea that Flew believes Schroeder’s laboured interpretation of Genesis might be “scientifically accurate” simply shows how little Flew knows of science. Schroeder’s bizarre notions of probability would cause him to fail Statistics 101, and his howlers in genetics and relativity are equally juvenile. (For a thoughtful analysis of Schroeder from a religious – Jewish – stance, I recommend R. David Hazony’s review in Azure.)
Towards the end of the interview, Habermas asked: “Do you think any of [Bertrand Russell, J. L. Mackie, and A. J. Ayer] would have been impressed in the direction of theism? “ Flew replied, enthusiastically: “Russell would have regarded these developments as evidence.” On this, I think Flew is dead wrong. Russell was, first and foremost, a mathematician: he would not have been taken in by the innumeracy and illogic that pervades the works of Schroeder et al.
The bottom line seems to be that Flew has decided that the scientific evidence demands a designer. It’s unfortunate that he doesn’t seem to have bothered to ask any real scientists: cosmologists, geneticists, geologists. What a pity.