The Curious Case of Atheist Philosopher Antony Flew

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Antony Flew created waves with his 2007 book There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind. He was a prominent atheist philosopher who converted to deism. Attacked or ignored before, Flew suddenly became a darling within many Christian circles and was celebrated by them as one of the 20th century’s most important philosophers.

Antony Flew, the Christian coup

A 2009 Greg Koukl podcast gives an example of this Christian reaction. Koukl blathered on about what a top-flight philosopher Flew was. He attacked the idea that Flew was losing it, as some atheists charged. “Just read his book and see,” he said. He said that scientists like Dawkins should feel privileged to be in the same room with a great philosopher like Flew. And so on.
Koukl is often motivating, and that was the case here. However, I doubt that it motivated me in the direction that he was expecting. In the first place, and you need only look at the cover (above) to see this, Flew wasn’t the author. It says “Antony Flew with Roy Abraham Varghese.” Maybe Flew wrote most of it, but I doubt it. The “with” customarily means that the other guy wrote it all. Skeptic magazine argues that Flew wrote none of it.
There are other clues. This book is structured in a very different way than a typical nonfiction book in which someone lays out a thesis and then supports it with evidence. It has long summaries of the thinking of other people—Heisenberg, Schrödinger, and so on. No original thinking here, just summaries.
For example, it has a book report-like summary of part of Infinite Minds by John Leslie, which talks about quantum laws and special relativity. Flew’s background gives no indication that he was comfortable with this kind of science, and even if he was, who cares? He wasn’t a physicist or even a science journalist, and he brings no authority to his analysis of physics.
There are also lots of places like this: “In my new introduction to the 2005 edition of God and Philosophy, I said, ‘I am myself delighted …’” (p. 123). Flew was reduced to quoting himself? No, this is Flew’s work being mined by a third party.
Another example: “In The Presumption of Atheism and other atheistic writings, I argued that we must take the universe itself …” (p. 134). Here again he’s referring to himself as if he were another person. The book is peppered with this structure. It looks exactly as it would if someone (I don’t know … maybe someone like Roy Abraham Varghese?) were told to write a book-length essay on someone else’s philosophy and tried to couch it as if written by the great man himself.
Was Flew losing it in his waning years?
Here’s how Flew summarized his new position in a 2007 video:

If the integrated complexity of the physical world is a good reason, as Einstein clearly thought it was, of believing that there was an intelligence behind it, then this argument applies a fortiori [even more strongly] with the inordinately greater integrated complexity of the living world.

Let’s step through Flew’s argument.

  1. Einstein is really smart. True, but this is an irrelevant appeal to authority.
  2. Einstein said that there’s an intelligence behind the physical world. False, but even if he did, so what? A really smart guy says that there’s a god behind the curtain, pulling the levers of reality, so therefore it must be so?
  3. As complex as the physical world is, the living world is much more so.
  4. If there’s intelligence behind the physical world, there’s even more reason to believe that about the far more complex biological world. Complexity doesn’t demand design. A pile of straw is complex (imagine documenting each piece), but it wasn’t designed.

Flew approvingly mentioned Einstein’s reluctance to go “where [he] didn’t have any authority at all and wasn’t inclined (reasonably enough) to talk about it.” Too bad Flew himself didn’t follow that advice!
The relevance of Flew’s conversion
Let’s return to Koukl’s point about Dawkins vs. Flew, that Dawkins should feel privileged to be in the same room with such a great philosopher. The book itself shows the ridiculousness of this complaint. In the beginning of the conclusion chapter, it lists “the three items of evidence we have considered in this volume—the laws of nature, life with its teleological organization, and the existence of the universe.” These three are all squarely in the domain of science! Now who’s the interloper into a field that he’s unqualified to critique?
If Varghese wants to spin Flew’s works or glean a theistic argument out of Flew’s writings, that’s fine, but what did Flew himself add to this project besides give permission? The image comes to mind of someone helping a senile old man sign his name to the release form. One critic of the book said, “Far from strengthening the case for the existence of God, [the book] rather weakens the case for the existence of Antony Flew.”

If a man stands by [the Bible], vote for him.
If he doesn’t, don’t.
— Jerry Falwell Sr.

Jesus never intended to give instructions to political leaders
on how to run a country.
— Jerry Falwell Jr.

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 4/3/13.)

Why Can’t God Follow the Lesson in the Prodigal Son Story Himself?

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Jesus tells the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15:11–32. We’re all familiar with it—a son demands his share of his inheritance and then runs off to some foreign land and wastes it. Destitute, he finally sees the error of his ways and decides to return. He throws himself on his father’s mercy, but the father forgives him in an instant and celebrates his return.
I’m against much of what the Bible says, but here’s a story that has real value. It has become a universally understood metaphor in Western civilization, but the Bible is an odd place to find it. Perhaps God might do well by reading it and resetting his own moral compass by its wisdom.
By contrast, the Old Testament has many one-strike-and-you’re-out stories about God. For example, Uzzah touched the Ark of the Covenant to steady it when the oxen stumbled, but God zapped him dead (1 Chronicles 13:9–10). There’s Onan, who didn’t want to impregnate his sister-in-law and “spilled his seed” (Genesis 38:8-10). Don’t forget that poor schlub who picked up sticks on the Sabbath (Numbers 15:32–6). And, of course, Adam and Eve when they ate the forbidden fruit.
This isn’t the “compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love” God that other parts of the Bible imagine (Psalm 103:8). God has a short fuse and isn’t at all forgiving, quite the opposite of the father in the parable.
If the moral of the parable is that we need to forgive, even after we’ve been grossly wronged, why can’t God set the example? Is he drunk with power, a deity who can do whatever the heck he likes? That’s the message from Job.
Some apologists will argue that it’s ridiculous to try to understand God’s actions with our puny minds. So what if God’s approach makes no sense? God is inscrutable and we should just assume that whatever God does is good and right by definition. The first problem is that this presupposes God and interprets the facts to fit. The second is that Christians who opt for this route must avoid labels for God that pretend that they do understand his actions, like “just” or “good.”
Imagine a Christian responding to something bad happening by saying that we simple humans can’t understand God’s reasoning. But when something good happens, of course, that same Christian is certain that he understands God’s thought process. I got the new job; the Americans conquer Iraq; a single baby is found alive in a crashed airplane—God’s generosity is boundless and his purpose is clear!
Use the “God can’t be understood” defense if you want, but be consistent. If we can’t understand why God allowed the Holocaust, then we can’t understand why he allowed the survivor in the plane crash.
But to get back to the point, why does God not follow the example of the father in the Prodigal Son parable? If we’ve wronged God, why can’t he just forgive us with no strings attached?
In fact, he does! God says of the people of Israel, “I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more” (Jeremiah 31:34). He says something almost identical in Isaiah 43:25. One wonders then why the song and dance about Jesus dying for our sins.
Incredibly, I’ve heard apologists try to justify the Prodigal Son story by saying that the moral of the story isn’t that generous forgiveness is a good thing. No, the point of the story is that you must ask for forgiveness (like Christians must ask God). They sacrifice a noble story to try to salvage the logic of their religion. Sad.
During the upcoming Easter season, why imagine that a human sacrifice must be given to appease a savage Bronze Age deity? Let’s see the Prodigal Son story as a far more healthy response to being wronged.

An atheist believes that a hospital should be built instead of a church. 
An atheist believes that deed must be done instead of prayer said. 
An atheist strives for involvement in life and not escape into death. 
He wants disease conquered, poverty vanished, war eliminated.
— Madalyn Murray O’Hair

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 4/1/13.)
Image credit: Way of Mercy Icons, flickr, CC

Jesus Magic? Not Impressive Compared to What Technology Gives Us.

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In the New Testament, Jesus does lots of impressive miracles.
More precisely, they were impressive for the time. Today we surpass them with technology so regularly that we often don’t notice. Let’s compare the miracles of Jesus with what modern technology can do.
Jesus walked on water. We can’t walk on water, but we can travel on the water in a vast array of boats, both large and small, powered and wind driven. For example, an aircraft carrier can carry 5000 people, sail at 30+ knots, and operate for 20 years without refueling. We can travel under the water with submarines. We can fly above the water with airplanes. We have even gone to the moon.
Feeding of the 5000. We can’t feed people with magic, but we can still feed lots of people. Norman Borlaug has saved perhaps one billion lives from starvation because of improved strains of wheat, for which he won the 1970 Nobel Peace Prize. The Haber process, which turns nitrogen into ammonia, produces fertilizer that is estimated “to be responsible for sustaining one-third of the Earth’s population.”
Cursing the fig tree. Jesus was hungry, but it wasn’t the season for figs. Nevertheless, Jesus cursed a fig tree, and it withered. While we can’t destroy trees with magic, we’ve got the destruction thing figured out. We have herbicide that kills plants. We have chain saws and bulldozers. We have dynamite and hydrogen bombs.
Water to wine. If the point here is wine as a safe drink (ground water can be polluted, and the alcohol in wine reduces the chance of bacterial contamination), modern societies provide safe water and sewers for waste.
Miraculous catch of fish. We can’t catch fish with magic, but modern fishing trawlers do a good job at catching lots of fish. They do perhaps too good a job, and aquaculture now produces as much tonnage as wild capture to reduce humanity’s footprint.
Calming the storm. We can’t stop storms, but we have gotten pretty good at prediction. We’re able to minimize the loss of life from disasters like the 1900 Galveston hurricane. Technology can also warn of tornadoes and tsunamis.
Prophecies. Jesus predicted his death and his second coming, but pause for a moment to consider this quote from Shakespeare:

Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
But will they come when you do call for them?

Jesus made prophecies, and so can any man, but do they actually come true? His predictions of a second coming within the lifetimes of some witnesses didn’t come to pass. His prediction of his death is part of a story that we have little reason to see as history.
Healing miracles. Jesus did many of these (I explored the healing miracles here). For example, he healed lepers. We don’t heal lepers with magic but with antibiotics. Leprosy is no longer much of a problem, as is the case for smallpox, bubonic plague, and polio.
Jesus cast out demons. We don’t, because we know they don’t cause disease. We can’t cure all illnesses, but we do a better job now that we’re focused on the actual causes.
Jesus restored sight and hearing. Here again, we can’t prevent all such cases or cure all that occur, but medicine has made remarkable improvements in health.
Jesus raised the dead. We don’t use magic, but modern medicine has returned thousands from conditions that just a century ago would be considered “dead.”
What Jesus didn’t do. Jesus didn’t do any miracles against which we can parallel civil engineering such as roads, bridges, and buildings. Or communication—telephones and the internet. Or the textile industry or the energy industry or the chemical industry or the transportation industry.
What Jesus did was party stunts. From helping God create the universe, he was reduced to doing magic for small audiences and today just appears in toast. Many of his tricks weren’t even all that new. For example, Greek mythology had the Oenotropae who could change water into wine. If Jesus were the real thing, unlike the claims of other religions, he could’ve created a supernova or terraformed Israel to replace deserts with farmland. Or maybe something that would’ve left a record that we could see today.
Some Christians will agree and say that Jesus didn’t come to improve the lot of people on earth but simply to spread his message.

Do not believe me unless I do the works of my Father. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father. (John 10:37–8)

Okay, we can’t duplicate what Jesus did by magic. But everything that has been improved for humanity has been improved by humanity. Even granting for the sake of argument that they happened, technology puts the claimed miracles of Jesus in perspective.

Religion may not be dying just yet, 
but it’s sure getting feeble in this age of reason.
— comment at WWJTD blog

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 3/25/13.)
Photo credit: Wikimedia

Alternative Medicine, Bible Style: Jesus’s Bizarre Approach to Medicine

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from Michelangelo's Sistine ChapelReligion in the West is mostly unregulated, like alternative medicine. Both make bold claims without evidence of efficacy. For both, it’s buyer beware. I cringe at the thought of gullible people throwing their money at stuff with bogus claims—homeopathy, magnetic bracelets, detoxing foot pads, aromatherapy, chelation therapy, colloidal minerals, iridology … and religion.
Christians are on the same page when they shake their heads at Scientology, whose story amounts to little more than a $100,000 sci-fi novel metered out in installments, or Heaven’s Gate, the cult whose members killed themselves to get to an alien spacecraft.
Traditional Christians are skeptical of the historical claims of the LDS church. Joseph Smith translated “golden plates” by using magic translating rocks, you say? Show us the plates.
Ditto for Sathya Sai Baba, who had millions of followers and died in 2011. He was an avatar (deity on earth) and performed many miracles, including curing himself of paralysis from a stroke and raising people from the dead. Christians wonder, have scientists corroborated these claims?
They’ll shake their heads at Steve Jobs, who attempted to cure his (very treatable) cancer with alternative medicine. He realized his mistake only when it was too late.
They’ll laugh with skeptics at the end-of-the-world claims of Harold Camping or fans of the Mayan calendar that ended in December, 2012.
But they stop laughing when the topic turns to Jesus.
The healing miracles of Jesus in the gospels record a number of outdated ideas about disease.

  1. Evil spirits cause disease. In the exorcism of the Gerasene demoniac, Jesus expelled many demons from a man into 2000 pigs, which ran into a lake and drowned. Demons cause physical crippling as well (Luke 13:10–13). We learn that knowing precisely how to expel the various kinds of demons is an art (Mark 9:25). And getting rid of an “impure spirit” doesn’t help because it’ll just find a bunch of its friends and turn the newly cleansed person into a drunken fraternity party (Luke 11:24–6).
  2. Sickness can come from sin. Jesus healed a disabled man at the Bethesda pool but warned him,

You are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you. (John 5:14)

We also see sickness as a consequence of sin when he forgives the paralyzed man who was lowered through the roof to get access to Jesus (Mark 2:2–12).

  1. Magical healings. Jesus healed a blind man by making mud with his spit and putting that on the man’s eyes. After he washed them, the man could see. (John 9:6–7). But don’t think that this magic is flawless. In the parallel story in Mark 8:22–5, Jesus needs two tries to get it to work.
  1. Healings by Jesus touching. Jesus used touch to cure a leper, a person with a fever, and two blind men. He also raised the dead.
  2. Healings by touching Jesus. A woman touched Jesus and was healed without Jesus doing anything, as if he were a medicine battery.

At once Jesus realized that power had gone out from him (Mark 5:30).

  1. Healings with magic spell. We learn that the Aramaic word ephphatha means “be opened” That’s the word Jesus used to cure a mute man (Mark 7:33–5). He said, “Talitha koum!” (“Little girl, I say to you, get up!”) to raise a dead girl (Mark 5:35–42).
  2. Healing at a distance. Jesus doesn’t even have to be there. He healed the centurion’s servant remotely (Matthew 8:5–13).

So what have we learned? According to the gospel story, some illnesses are caused by sin, and others are caused by demons. Expelling demons is a waste of time, because they’ll just return with more demons. Jesus can cure with special techniques, he can cure just by a touch, he can cure by being touched, he can cure with spells, and he can cure at a distance without touching at all.
I don’t know what to make of this hodge-podge of techniques except to wonder why Jesus didn’t just put up his feet and heal thousands of worthy people remotely or eliminate entire diseases like cancer and smallpox.
Apologists may argue that Jesus didn’t cure much because he had no interest in doing so, and yet the gospels disagree. A crowd followed Jesus, and

he had compassion on them and healed their sick (Matt. 14:14).

Seeing a widow at the funeral of her only son, Luke says:

his heart went out to her and he said, “Don’t cry” (Luke 7:13)

and then he raised her son. He heals people, at least in part, for the same reason a modern doctor does, because of compassion. He also used it as proof of his divinity. To the followers of John who asked him if he were the real deal, Jesus said:

Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. (Luke 7:22) 

Reject any claims that Jesus did less healing in his ministry than that done by an average doctor because healing wasn’t important to him.
Alternative medicine vs. religion
Alternative therapies give hope where science offers none, and Americans spend $34 billion each year on them. The same is true for religion, and Americans give three times that amount to religious organizations.
Some of the nutty claims can be put to the test. In a TED video (scroll to 2:20), magician James Randi swallows an entire bottle of sleeping pills. Not to worry—it’s homeopathic medicine, guaranteed to have no active ingredients.
Does Christianity offer anything more? The gospel stories of the healings of Jesus sound like a nutty infomercial rather than historical fact.

Idiots, the lame, the blind, the dumb,
are men in whom the devils have established themselves,
and all the physicians who heal these infirmities,
as though they proceeded from natural causes,
are ignorant blockheads.
— Martin Luther

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 3/20/13.)
Photo credit: Wikipedia

The Limits of Open Mindedness in Debates on Same-Sex Marriage and Abortion

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Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) now supports same-sex marriage, a reversal he made public in 2013. He was the only Republican senator holding that position. He publicly welcomed the Obergefell decision that legalized same-sex marriage in 2015. What caused the turnaround was his son coming out as gay two years earlier.
Portman’s record against homosexual issues had consistently followed the traditional Republican position. He voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, he supported the constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, and he voted to prohibit same-sex couples in Washington, DC from adopting.
He said about his change of heart:

[My son’s homosexuality] allowed me to think about this issue from a new perspective, and that’s as a dad who loves his son a lot.

Dick Cheney had been a closet supporter of same-sex marriage for years because of his lesbian daughter but in 2009 he also came out on the issue.
Why the delay from realization to public position? Are Republicans hesitant to do the right thing on same-sex marriage because it’s politically inconvenient? Since when do you put what’s best for the party in front of what’s best?
Frustrating though the delay is, they have company. I’m guessing that was behind the Catholic Church pedophilia cover up—doing what’s right for individuals took a back seat to what was best for the Church. But that’s a side issue. Portman’s change was a step forward, and let’s celebrate politicians who take a potentially unpopular stand.
Imagining it vs. living it.
Here’s my question. I see that having a homosexual relative makes the issue one you can’t just push away, but why does it take that? Isn’t one of humanity’s super powers the ability to imagine themselves in new situations? Why couldn’t Portman or Cheney wonder, “Gee, what if this issue hit me directly? What if my own child was homosexual? Would I still not budge on ‘traditional marriage’?”
The tide has turned, and many conservative legislators who are now against same-sex marriage will change their minds in the next decade, but why must it take so long? Why can’t they imagine themselves in Portman’s position and change their minds next week? (And when they finally do change, will they think back on Portman’s example and wonder why it took so long?)
This kind of empathy must be harder than it looks, like only vaguely knowing what hearing a doctor’s diagnosis of cancer feels like from having friends tell of their experiences. Speculating about something is a poor substitute for it actually happening, and Portman and Cheney would probably still hold their old positions if not for the push from their children.
Applying this thinking to abortion
Let’s broaden this observation. One of my posts on abortion received nearly 1000 comments, and I argued there with several pro-life advocates. I’m guessing they were older men for whom abortion could never affect them personally (related post: Why is it always men advancing the pro-life position?). Their positions were simple: a fetus is a human life, and it’s just wrong to kill a human. That’s it—no nuance, no exceptions, no consideration for the harm of not having an abortion. And why should there be? It’s murder—end of story.
I see these antagonists as the pre-enlightenment Portman or Cheney. They’re smart, they can marshal arguments to support their position, and their position isn’t insane—abortion does kill a fetus.
It’s the tunnel vision that’s the problem. Let’s broaden the view, Senator Portman, and imagine that your own son were gay. Let’s broaden the view, Mr. Pro-Life, and imagine that your own 15-year-old daughter had an unwanted pregnancy. All the plans that you and your wife have for your daughter—graduating from high school, then college, and then a satisfying career and a family—are in jeopardy. How much school will she miss? What teams or clubs must she withdraw from? What commitments will she have to cancel for decorum or out of embarrassment?
It will be an enormous bump in the road if she places the child for adoption. But girls in that situation almost never do—just two percent of premarital births in the U.S. are placed for adoption. Now we’re talking about, not a bump in the road, but a fork to a completely different life, a life with her as a 16-year-old single mom living at home trying to make a life from the constrained options available.
Problem one is that Mr. Pro-Life can’t put himself in this situation, or at least can’t do it successfully. Imagining it is a poor substitute for actually hearing his daughter sobbing in her room and finding out what the problem is.
Problem two is where the parallel to the gay rights lesson from Sen. Portman fails. Portman understands that he can’t make his son un-gay, but Mr. Pro-Life can assist or even encourage his daughter to become un-pregnant. He could cite extenuating circumstances in his situation, take care of the problem, and then return to his pro-life dogmatism.
We see this situation in the stories of women picketers of abortion clinics who, being human, have their own unwanted pregnancies. Or their daughters do. They’ll slip in the back door, have the abortion, and then be back on the picket lines days later. When asked about the hypocrisy, they say that other women are the sluts. They, by contrast, had a good excuse.
For this reason, pro-lifers may never be able to understand the difficulty facing the nearly one million American women who choose abortion each year. And perhaps we will never have a reasoned conversation on this divisive issue.

I was always looking outside myself 
for strength and confidence, 
but it comes from within. 
It is there all the time.
— Anna Freud

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 3/18/13.)
Photo credit: Denis Bocquet, flickr, CC

Why Does the Bible Have No Recipe for Soap?

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Bible recipe soapThe Bible has a detailed description of the priestly costume in Exodus 28. Aaron and his priestly descendants certainly looked fabulous, but if the Bible can spend an entire chapter on this, why not a method for making something useful, like soap?
It’s not hard to make. Imagine if the following recipe were a quote from the Bible (give it a King James tone if that makes it sound more authentic):

Pack a wooden bucket with wood ashes. Pour in boiling water. Make a small hole near the bottom so the water can be collected in a pot as it drips out. The liquid is caustic, so don’t let it touch skin or metal. Pour the liquid back through the ashes until it is strong enough to dissolve a chicken feather.
Boil this liquid until most of the water is gone. Add rendered fat from cattle or other animals and stir while cooking until it thickens. Pour into molds and let it harden.

There are lots of tricks to making soap properly, but a priesthood could’ve easily perfected the technique.
With this, the Bible could then add the basics of health care—when and how to use this soap, how water is purified by boiling (actually purified, not just pretend purified with a ritual), how latrines should be built and sited, how to avoid polluting the water supply, how to avoid spreading disease, and so on. Other ideas to improve society come to mind—low-tech ways to pump water, spin fiber, make metal alloys, and so on—but health seems to be a fundamental one to start with.
Several passages have been advanced to argue that the Bible did refer to soap. Malachi 3:2 and Jeremiah 2:22 allude to it, but that word means ashes or soapy plant. In Job 9:30, the word isn’t soap but “snow water” (that is, pure water). Numbers 19:1–12 has been claimed as a recipe for soap, though it’s clearly just a ritual. None of these are soap as we would understand it, as defined by the recipe above. If the Bible did have a recipe for soap, wouldn’t we read in the Bible about people using it and the health improvements that came from the new practice?
The Bible has an abysmal relationship with science (more here and here), unless you see it as simply another book of mythology and superstition, in which case it’s a product of its times like all the rest. Jesus does no better with his attempts at medicine. Wouldn’t someone who preached “Love your neighbor as yourself” bring his A game to the problem of public health?
Another attempt to salvage the Bible argues that its odd dietary rules (no pork or shellfish, no mixing of meat and dairy, etc.) are healthy, but these rules are arbitrary when seen from a modern standpoint. Sure, avoiding pork means that you can’t get sick from eating poorly cooked pork, but can’t you still get sick from eating tainted meat from other animals? An analysis by Mary Douglas (discussed here) makes much more sense out of the ritual prohibitions.
There are two possibilities for the Bible’s health advice.

  • An infinitely loving God created us but just didn’t give a hoot about the health of his creation. He could’ve made healthy practices mandatory rituals, but he didn’t. However, he did care enough about making his priests look sharp to devote an entire chapter to their costumes.
  • The Old Testament was just written by ordinary men and reflects their ordinary knowledge and interests.

Which seems likelier?

Man once surrendering his reason, 
has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, 
and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind.
— Thomas Jefferson

(This is an update of a post that originally appeared 3/13/13.)
Image credit: Arlington County, flickr, CC