The Philosophy of God

Sometimes we get motivated to do something from unexpected sources. A few weeks ago I was moving some books in my home and found my youngest son's college philosophy course copy of "There Is A God - How the world's most notorious atheist changed his mind" by Antony Flew with Roy Abraham Varghese. I had never heard of the authors but the title of the book was intriguing so I put it in my pile of reading material. I found the book to be very interesting and it sparked me to add my own views of the philosophy of God to my web site, www.thepurplemuse.com.

It turns out that Antony Flew was one of the world's most famous atheist philosophers for more than 50 years and was past 80 years of age when he fundamentally changed his philosophy about God. It appears that Flew changed his personal philosophy from being a hard core atheist to accepting "the existence of a self-existent, immutable, immaterial, omnipotent, and omniscient Being". Flew also describes God as "an infinitely intelligent Mind." After I read the book I searched the internet for more information about Antony Flew and learned that many of his former atheist colleagues don't believe that Flew really changed his personal philosophy at an advanced age. Some believe that "There Is A God", copyrighted in 2007, actually reflects the views of Roy Abraham Varghese, not Flew's. Debate raged among philosophers regarding Flew's views until he died in April, 2010.

From my perspective the most important aspect of Flew's conversion from atheist to deist from is his reasoning that supports his fundamental change in philosophy. What changed over his 50 years of philosophical writing and lecturing was the development of science and our understanding of the laws of nature and the universe. The two specific areas that got my attention were the development of mankind's understanding of DNA and the complexity of life forms and the Big Bang theory regarding the creation of the universe.

DNA is an extremely complex coding system that differentiates life forms that could never have occurred randomly in nature. There is no random path under any probability analysis that generates the outcome that is created by DNA based life forms. The assumption that one must make is that some higher level Being/Intelligence/Mind created life as we know it. It is hard to argue with this logic so I won't. I accept Flew's logic.

The development of the Big Bang Theory began in the 1920s and 1930s due to the efforts of astronomers of that era and the development of the Theory of General Relativity by Albert Einstein. Huge strides in Big Bang theory analysis have been made since the late 1990s as a result of major advances in technology including the vast amount of new data provided by the Hubble Space Telescope and astronomers using new technology observatories. Scientists now have solid measurements of many of the parameters of the Big Bang model, and discovered that the expansion of the Universe appears to be accelerating.

During Flew's lifetime mankind's fundamental understanding of the universe changed. There was a beginning of the universe approximately 13.7 billion years ago, when the Big Bang occurred. The question is who or what caused the Big Bang and what existed prior to the Big Bang. Flew highly respects the science behind the Big Bang theory and its impact on philosophy related to God. He changed his views to be in agreement with others that previously concluded that only God could create a universe. I cannot disagree.

Another extremely interesting aspect of Flew's book is Appendix B, "The Self-Revelation of God in Human History: A Dialogue on Jesus with N.T. Wright". In Appendix B Flew reflects on the Christian claim "that God was incarnate in Jesus Christ". Appendix B is a series of questions by Flew and answers by Bishop N.T. Wright of Durham, England, an Oxford New Testament scholar. Wright makes a solid case that Jesus was a real person. I have no doubt that this is the case based on the significant historical record supporting the existence of Jesus. The bulk of Appendix B is spent the topic of the resurrection of Jesus and the content of the New Testament gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John on this subject. Wright provides his analysis in a straight forward manner to justify his position that the biblical record of Jesus resurrection reflects actual oral history from the time of Jesus and therefore Jesus is the Son of God. Flew doesn't go as far as to endorse Wright's conclusions but clearly he is open to the possibility that Wright's conclusions are correct.

I also agree that Jesus was a real person but Wright's simplistic approach to justifying the historical reality of the resurrection doesn't meet a test of reasonableness from my perspective. I expressed a number of my views on this general subject area in my article Spin, Lies, Conspiracy and Truth and provide several other references on this overall topic.

I believe that mankind is just beginning to learn the truth about our universe and mankind's history on earth. The evolution of the physical, mental and spiritual elements of mankind over thousands of years tells us that we are extremely complex beings and the story of how we evolved to this state is one that is extremely complex and we don't fully understand.

Further investigation and learning must continue.