Patrick Glynn, Harvard ve Cambridge gibi dünyanın en ünlü iki üniversitesinden mezun olmuş, Reagan döneminde uzun yıllar siyasî danışmanlık yapmış, American Enterprise Institute gibi önemli düşünce kuruluşlarında çalışmış bir siyaset bilimci. Hâlen Washington DC’deki George Washington Üniversitesi’nde Toplum Siyaseti Çalışmaları Enstitüsü’nün yöneticiliğini yürütüyor. Prof. Glynn’e ün kazandıran çalışması ise, 1999 yılında yayımlanan “Allah’ın Varlığının Delilleri: Post-Seküler Bir Dünyada İnanç ve Aklın Uzlaşması” adlı kitabı oldu. Uzun yıllar bir ateist olarak yaşamasına rağmen, ilmî delilleri yeniden incelediğinde bir dönüşüm geçiren ve Allah’ın varlığını kabul eden Glynn, söz konusu kitapta bu kararında rol oynayan delilleri anlatıyor. Patrick Glynn ile Washington’da görüştük ve ateizmi neden terk ettiğinden, yeni muhafazakâr hareketin zihnî alt yapısına kadar pek çok konuyu konuştuk.

Patrick Glynn: Ben Bir Ateisttim!

Röportaj aktarımı: Mustafa Akyol

Patrick Glynn, Harvard ve Cambridge gibi dünyanın en ünlü iki üniversitesinden mezun olmuş, Reagan döneminde uzun yıllar siyasî danışmanlık yapmış, American Enterprise Institute gibi önemli düşünce kuruluşlarında çalışmış bir siyaset bilimci. Hâlen Washington DC’deki George Washington Üniversitesi’nde Toplum Siyaseti Çalışmaları Enstitüsü’nün yöneticiliğini yürütüyor. Prof. Glynn’e ün kazandıran çalışması ise, 1999 yılında yayımlanan “Allah’ın Varlığının Delilleri: Post-Seküler Bir Dünyada İnanç ve Aklın Uzlaşması” adlı kitabı oldu. Uzun yıllar bir ateist olarak yaşamasına rağmen, ilmî delilleri yeniden incelediğinde bir dönüşüm geçiren ve Allah’ın varlığını kabul eden Glynn, söz konusu kitapta bu kararında rol oynayan delilleri anlatıyor.

Önemli bir dönüşüm yaşadığınızı biliyoruz. Ateizmin bir yanılgı olduğunu ne zaman ve nasıl fark ettiniz?

Belki önce, nasıl ateist olduğumu anlatmalıyım. Ben dindar Katolik bir ailede yetiştim. Pazar günleri kilise korosuna katılırdım. Ama gençliğimde, 60′lı yıllarda değişmeye başladım, Harvard’da geçirdiğim yıllarda o devrin tipik agnostik modelini benimsedim. Strauss ile birlikte ise, örtülü bir ateizmi kabullendim. Bu ateizm daha çok Darwinizm’e dayanıyordu. Darwin’den sonra ateizm, zaten pek çok Batılı entelektüel arasında sorgulanmadan kabul edilen standart bir görüş haline gelmişti.

Ancak 80′lerde bu tablo değişmeye başladı. Aralarında benim de bulunduğum pek çok entelektüel, konuyu baştan ele alarak ateizmi sorguladı. Öte yandan Amerikan kültürü içinde de bir değişim başlamıştı. Bugün Amerikalı elitler arasında hâlâ son derece koyu seküler bir kanat var. Ama bunların görüşü, ideolojilerden sadece biri haline gelmiş durumda; eskiden, meselâ 60′larda veya 70′lerde ise söz konusu görüş gerçeğin tâ kendisi olarak kabul görüyordu. Eğer Harvard’da okuyup da pazar günleri kiliseye gidiyor olsaydınız, biraz garip birisi olarak görülürdünüz, biraz eski moda, eskide kalmış birisi olarak. Bugün bu tablo büyük ölçüde değişmiş durumda ve Amerikan entelektüelleri arasında da güçlü bir dindarlık görebiliyorsunuz. Polkinghorne gibi büyük fizikçiler Allah’ın varlığını savunuyor ve bunu çok ma’kul ve ikna edici şekilde yapıyorlar.

 

Kitabınızda da bahsettiğiniz bu ma’kul ve iknâ edici delillerden kısaca bahsedebilir misiniz?

20. yüzyılın başlarında Big-Bang (Büyük Patlama) teorisi kabul edildi ve bu teori, âlemin bir başlangıcı, yani yaratılış ânı olduğunu gösterdi. Bu, kâinatın sonsuz olduğunu savunan materyalist görüşe önemli bir darbe oldu. 1970′lerde ise fizikçiler, enteresan ve düşündürücü bir hususu fark ettiler. Kâinatın bütün fizikî dengelerinin, meselâ yerçekiminin veya atomu bir arada tutan nükleer kuvvetlerin, yaşanabilir bir âlem oluşması için en ideal değerlerde olduklarını buldular. “Antropik Prensip” (İnsan için hazırlanmış kâinat anlayışı) adı verilen bu şaşırtıcı buluş, içinde yaşadığımız kâinatın rastgele ortaya çıkmadığı, insan hayatı için özel olarak yaratıldığı fikrine büyük bir delil oluşturdu. Yıllar geçtikçe bu prensibi destekleyen yeni deliller de ortaya çıkmaya devam ediyor.

 

Biyolojide de, bir yaratılışın varlığını gösteren deliller var mı?

Elbette var! Bugün biyoloji dünyasına baktığınızda, yaratılış düşüncesine yaklaşan bir paradigma değişikliği görebilirsiniz. Biyolojinin 19. yüzyılda şekillenmiş paradigması, yani temel kabulleri sarsılıyor. Bu paradigmada en büyük pay Darwinizm’e ait. Bu teori, yeryüzündeki bütün hayatın şuursuz tabiat hâdiselerinin eseri olduğunu öne sürmüştü. Oysa canlılığın detayları keşfedildikçe, karşımıza mükemmel, hassas ve yoğun bir programa dayanan sistemler çıkıyor. Bu sistemlerin gâyesiz sebeplerin ve rastlantıların ürünü olduğu düşüncesi giderek kabul edilemez hâle geliyor.

 

Sadece Darwin değil, Freud da sarsılıyor galiba?

Kesinlikle! Freud, insan psikolojisine materyalist bir açıklama getirmeye çalışmıştı. Dahası, dinî inancın bir tür nevroz olduğunu ileri sürmüş, insanların ancak ateist olduklarında sağlıklı bir psikolojiye sahip olabileceklerini söylemişti. Ama deliller bunun tam aksini gösteriyor. Psikolojik araştırmalar, dindar insanların psikolojik yönden çok daha sağlıklı olduklarını gösteren verilerle dolu. Freud’un, dinin modernleşme ile birlikte yok olacağı şeklindeki tahmini ise, tamamen boşa çıkmış durumda.

Kitabınızda ruhun varlığına dâir ölüm ve sonrası hakkında yaşanmış tecrübelerden deliller çıkarıyorsunuz, değil mi? Evet! Aslında benim ateizmden vazgeçmemi sağlayan sürecin, asıl bu konudaki delilleri incelemekle başladığını söyleyebilirim. 90′ların başında, uzun bir tatil döneminde, ölümün kıyısına gelen insanların tecrübeleri hakkındaki raporları inceledim. Bunların çoğu, ameliyatlar sırasında kalbleri duran, birkaç dakika gerçekten biyolojik bir ölüm yaşayan, ama sonra hayata dönen kişiler. Ölümle yüzleştikleri kısa süre hakkında anlattıklarında ise, büyük benzerlikler var. Hemen hepsi ruhlarının vücutlarından ayrıldığını, kendilerini dışarıdan gördüklerini belirtiyor. Anlattıklarının hayâl ürünü olması ise imkânsız; çünkü o sırada odada neler yaşandığına, doktorların kendilerini kurtarmak için neler yaptıklarına dâir detaylı tariflerde bulunuyorlar ve bunları gözleriyle görmüş olmaları mümkün değil. Kitapta detaylı olarak anlattığım bütün bu deliller, insanın bir ruha sahip olduğunu gösteren önemli bir veri. Bir ruha sahip olmamız ise, ateizmin temel dayanağı olan materyalist felsefeyi yalanlıyor.

 

21. yüzyıla nasıl bakıyorsunuz? Bu deliller insanlığın düşüncesini nereye taşıyacak?

20. yüzyılın büyük bölümüne egemen olan sekülarizm artık geçerliliğini yitirdi. Sekülarizmin objektif bir gerçeklik olduğu sanılıyordu; artık o, sadece farklı dünya görüşlerinden birisi hâline geldi ve zemini de giderek eriyor. 21. yüzyıl, 20. yüzyıldan daha dindar olacak. Ama soru şu: Hoşgörülü ve barışçı bir din anlayışı mı, yoksa çatışmacı bir din anlayışı mı yükselecek? Kuşkusuz her sağduyulu insan, birincisini diliyor. http://www.sizinti.com.tr/konular.php?KONUID=989

 

SCIENCE FINDS GOD

The Achievements Of Modern Science Seem To Contradict Religion And Undermine Faith. But For A Growing Number Of Scientists, The Same Discoveries Offer Support For Spirituality And Hints Of The Very Nature Of God.

THE MORE DEEPLY SCIENTISTS see into the secrets of the universe, you’d expect, the more God would fade away from their hearts and minds. But that’s not how it went for Allan Sandage. Now slightly stooped and white-haired at 72, Sandage has spent a professional lifetime coaxing secrets out of the stars, peering through telescopes from Chile to California in the hope of spying nothing less than the origins and destiny of the universe. As much as any other 20th-century astronomer, Sandage actually figured it out: his observations of distant stars showed how fast the universe is expanding and how old it is (15 billion years or so). But through it all Sandage, who says he was “”almost a practicing atheist as a boy,” was nagged by mysteries whose answers were not to be found in the glittering panoply of supernovas. Among them: why is there something rather than nothing? Sandage began to despair of answering such questions through reason alone, and so, at 50 , he willed himself to accept God. “”It was my science that drove me to the conclusion that the world is much more complicated than can be explained by science,” he says. “”It is only through the supernatural that I can understand the mystery of existence.”

Something surprising is happening between those two old warhorses science and religion.

Historically, they have alternated between mutual support and bitter enmity. Although religious doctrine midwifed the birth of the experimental method centuries ago (following story), faith and reason soon parted ways. Galileo, Darwin and others whose research challenged church dogma were branded heretics, and the polite way to reconcile science and theology was to simply agree that each would keep to its own realm: science would ask, and answer, empirical questions like “”what” and “”how”; religion would confront the spiritual, wondering “”why.” But as science grew in authority and power beginning with the Enlightenment, this detente broke down. Some of its greatest minds dismissed God as an unnecessary hypothesis, one they didn’t need to explain how galaxies came to shine or how life grew so complex. Since the birth of the universe could now be explained by the laws of physics alone, the late astronomer and atheist Carl Sagan concluded, there was “”nothing for a Creator to do,” and every thinking person was therefore forced to admit “”the absence of God.” Today the scientific community so scorns faith, says Sandage, that “”there is a reluctance to reveal yourself as a believer, the opprobrium is so severe.”

Some clergy are no more tolerant of scientists. A fellow researcher and friend of Sandage’s was told by a pastor, “”Unless you accept and believe that the Earth and universe are only 6,000 years old [as a literal reading of the Bible implies], you cannot be a Christian.” It is little wonder that people of faith resent science: by reducing the miracle of life to a series of biochemical reactions, by explaining Creation as a hiccup in space-time, science seems to undermine belief, render existence meaningless and rob the world of spiritual wonder.

But now “”theology and science are entering into a new relationship,” says physicist turned theologian Robert John Russell, who in 1981 founded the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. Rather than undercutting faith and a sense of the spiritual, scientific discoveries are offering support for them, at least in the minds of people of faith. Big-bang cosmology, for instance, once read as leaving no room for a Creator, now implies to some scientists that there is a design and purpose behind the universe. Evolution, say some scientist-theologians, provides clues to the very nature of God. And chaos theory, which describes such mundane processes as the patterns of weather and the dripping of faucets, is being interpreted as opening a door for God to act in the world.

From Georgetown to Berkeley, theologians who embrace science, and scientists who cannot abide the spiritual emptiness of empiricism, are establishing institutes integrating the two. Books like “”Science and Theology: The New Consonance” and “”Belief in God in an Age of Science” are streaming off the presses. A June symposium on “”Science and the Spiritual Quest,” organized by Russell’s CTNS, drew more than 320 paying attendees and 33 speakers, and a PBS documentary on science and faith will air this fall.

In 1977 Nobel physicist Steven Weinberg of the University of Texas sounded a famous note of despair: the more the universe has become comprehensible through cosmology, he wrote, the more it seems pointless. But now the very science that “”killed” God is, in the eyes of believers, restoring faith. Physicists have stumbled on signs that the cosmos is custom-made for life and consciousness. It turns out that if the constants of nature–unchanging numbers like the strength of gravity, the charge of an electron and the mass of a proton–were the tiniest bit different, then atoms would not hold together, stars would not burn and life would never have made an appearance. “”When you realize that the laws of nature must be incredibly finely tuned to produce the universe we see,” says John Polkinghorne, who had a distinguished career as a physicist at Cambridge University before becoming an Anglican priest in 1982, “”that conspires to plant the idea that the universe did not just happen, but that there must be a purpose behind it.” Charles Townes, who shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering the principles of the laser, goes further: “”Many have a feeling that somehow intelligence must have been involved in the laws of the universe.”

Although the very rationality of science often feels like an enemy of the spiritual, here, too, a new reading can sustain rather than snuff out belief. Ever since Isaac Newton, science has blared a clear message: the world follows rules, rules that are fundamentally mathematical, rules that humans can figure out. Humans invent abstract mathematics, basically making it up out of their imaginations, yet math magically turns out to describe the world. Greek mathematicians divided the circumference of a circle by its diameter, for example, and got the number pi, 3.14159 . . . . Pi turns up in equations that describe subatomic particles, light and other quantities that have no obvious connections to circles. This points, says Polkinghorne, “”to a very deep fact about the nature of the universe,” namely, that our minds, which invent mathematics, conform to the reality of the cosmos. We are somehow tuned in to its truths. Since pure thought can penetrate the universe’s mysteries, “”this seems to be telling us that something about human consciousness is harmonious with the mind of God,” says Carl Feit, a cancer biologist at Yeshiva University in New York and Talmudic scholar.

To most worshipers, a sense of the divine as an unseen presence behind the visible world is all well and good, but what they really yearn for is a God who acts in the world. Some scientists see an opening for this sort of God at the level of quantum or subatomic events. In this spooky realm, the behavior of particles is unpredictable. In perhaps the most famous example, a radioactive element might have a half-life of, say, one hour. Half-life means that half of the atoms in a sample will decay in that time; half will not. But what if you have only a single atom? Then, in an hour, it has a 50-50 chance of decaying. And what if the experiment is arranged so that if the atom does decay, it releases poison gas? If you have a cat in the lab, will the cat be alive or dead after the hour is up? Physicists have discovered that there is no way to determine, even in principle, what the atom would do. Some theologian-scientists see that decision point–will the atom decay or not? will the cat live or die?–as one where God can act. “”Quantum mechanics allows us to think of special divine action,” says Russell. Even better, since few scientists abide miracles, God can act without violating the laws of physics.

An even newer science, chaos theory, describes phenomena like the weather and some chemical reactions whose exact outcomes cannot be predicted. It could be, says Polkinghorne, that God selects which possibility becomes reality. This divine action would not violate physical laws either.

Most scientists still park their faith, if they have it, at the laboratory door. But just as belief can find inspiration in science, so scientists can find inspiration in belief. Physicist Mehdi Golshani of Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, drawing from the Koran, believes that natural phenomena are “”God’s signs in the universe,” and that studying them is almost a religious obligation. The Koran asks humans to “”travel in the earth, then see how He initiated the creation.” Research, Golshani says, “”is a worship act, in that it reveals more of the wonders of God’s creation.” The same strain runs through Judaism. Carl Feit cites Maimonides, “”who said that the only pathway to achieve a love of God is by understanding the works of his hand, which is the natural universe. Knowing how the universe functions is crucial to a religious person because this is the world He created.” Feit is hardly alone. According to a study released last year, 40 percent of American scientists believe in a personal God–not merely an ineffable power and presence in the world, but a deity to whom they can pray.

To Joel Primack, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, “”practicing science [even] has a spiritual goal”–namely, providing inspiration. It turns out, explains Primack, that the largest size imaginable, the entire universe, is 10 with 29 zeros after it (in centimeters). The smallest size describes the subatomic world, and is 10 with 24 zeros (and a decimal) in front of it. Humans are right in the middle. Does this return us to a privileged place? Primack doesn’t know, but he describes this as a “”soul-satisfying cosmology.”

Although skeptical scientists grumble that science has no need of religion, forward-looking theologians think religion needs science. Religion “”is incapable of making its moral claims persuasive or its spiritual comfort effective [unless] its cognitive claims” are credible, argues physicist-theologian Russell. Although upwards of 90 percent of Americans believe in a personal God, fewer believe in a God who parts seas, or creates species one by one. To make religions forged millenniums ago relevant in an age of atoms and DNA, some theologians are “”incorporat[ing] knowledge gained from natural science into the formation of doctrinal beliefs,” says Ted Peters of Pacific Lutheran Seminary. Otherwise, says astronomer and Jesuit priest William Stoeger, religion is in danger of being seen, by people even minimally acquainted with science, “”as an anachronism.”

Science cannot prove the existence of God, let alone spy him at the end of a telescope. But to some believers, learning about the universe offers clues about what God might be like. As W. Mark Richardson of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences says, “”Science may not serve as an eyewitness of God the creator, but it can serve as a character witness.” One place to get a glimpse of God’s character, ironically, is in the workings of evolution. Arthur Peacocke, a biochemist who became a priest in the Church of England in 1971, has no quarrel with evolution. To the contrary: he finds in it signs of God’s nature. He infers, from evolution, that God has chosen to limit his omnipotence and omniscience. In other words, it is the appearance of chance mutations, and the Darwinian laws of natural selection acting on this “”variation,” that bring about the diversity of life on Earth. This process suggests a divine humility, a God who acts selflessly for the good of creation, says theologian John Haught, who founded the Georgetown (University) Center for the Study of Science and Religion. He calls this a “”humble retreat on God’s part”: much as a loving parent lets a child be, and become, freely and without interference, so does God let creation make itself.

It would be an exaggeration to say that such sophisticated theological thinking is remaking religion at the level of the local parish, mosque or synagogue. But some of these ideas do resonate with ordinary worshipers and clergy. For Billy Crockett, president of Walking Angel Records in Dallas, the discoveries of quantum mechanics that he reads about in the paper reinforce his faith that “”there is a lot of mystery in the nature of things.” For other believers, an appreciation of science deepens faith. “”Science produces in me a tremendous awe,” says Sister Mary White of the Benedictine Meditation Center in St. Paul, Minn. “”Science and spirituality have a common quest, which is a quest for truth.” And if science has not yet influenced religious thought and practice at the grass-roots level very much, just wait, says Ted Peters of CTNS. Much as feminism sneaked up on churches and is now shaping the liturgy, he predicts, “”in 10 years science will be a major factor in how many ordinary religious people think.”

Not everyone believes that’s such a hot idea. “”Science is a method, not a body of knowledge,” says Michael Shermer, a director of the Skeptics Society, which debunks claims of the paranormal. “”It can have nothing to say either way about whether there is a God. These are two such different things, it would be like using baseball stats to prove a point in football.” Another red flag is that adherents of different faiths–like the Orthodox Jews, Anglicans, Quakers, Catholics and Muslims who spoke at the June conference in Berkeley–tend to find, in science, confirmation of what their particular religion has already taught them.

Take the difficult Christian concept of Jesus as both fully divine and fully human. It turns out that this duality has a parallel in quantum physics. In the early years of this century, physicists discovered that entities thought of as particles, like electrons, can also act as waves. And light, considered a wave, can in some experiments act like a barrage of particles. The orthodox interpretation of this strange situation is that light is, simultaneously, wave and particle. Electrons are, simultaneously, waves and particles. Which aspect of light one sees, which face an electron turns to a human observer, varies with the circumstances. So, too, with Jesus, suggests physicist F. Russell Stannard of England’s Open University. Jesus is not to be seen as really God in human guise, or as really human but acting divine, says Stannard: “”He was fully both.” Finding these parallels may make some people feel, says Polkinghorne, “”that this is not just some deeply weird Christian idea.”

Jews aren’t likely to make the same leap. And someone who is not already a believer will not join the faithful because of quantum mechanics; conversely, someone in whom science raises no doubts about faith probably isn’t even listening. But to people in the middle, for whom science raises questions about religion, these new concordances can deepen a faith already present. As Feit says, “”I don’t think that by studying science you will be forced to conclude that there must be a God. But if you have already found God, then you can say, from understanding science, “Ah, I see what God has done in the world’.”

In one sense, science and religion will never be truly reconciled. Perhaps they shouldn’t be. The default setting of science is eternal doubt; the core of religion is faith. Yet profoundly religious people and great scientists are both driven to understand the world. Once, science and religion were viewed as two fundamentally different, even antagonistic, ways of pursuing that quest, and science stood accused of smothering faith and killing God. Now, it may strengthen belief. And although it cannot prove God’s existence, science might whisper to believers where to seek the divine.

 

AN UNEASY TRUCE

Throughout Western history, science and religion have been like siblings–sometimes at loggerheads, sometimes on common ground.

800-1000 The Islamic Empire, where it is believed that astronomy and mathematics provided a glimpse of God, is for centuries the only repository of many Greek and Egyptian texts.

1268-73 In writings on Aristotle’s physical studies, Thomas Aquinas synthesizes scientific inquiry with Christian thought. After him, medieval scientists see their role as uncovering the divine plan.

1543 Copernicus publishes “De Revolutionibus.” It concludes that the earth revolves around the sun, challenging man’s exalted place at the center of God’s plan of the universe.

1633 Galileo is censured by the Inquisition for writing about and teaching the Copernican system against papal orders. He’s made to recant and is placed under house arrests.

1687 Isaac Newton’s gravitational theory, published in the “Principia,” completes the mechanistic vision of the cosmos. Newton leaves in a sliver of God–as the “first cause” of the universe.

1802 In “Research on the Organization of Living Bodies,” the chevalier Lamarck posits an evolutionary view of animal species–contradicting the idea that God created them in immutable, constant form.

1842 Richard Owen determines that recently found fossils belong to an extinct animal group he calls dinosaurs. Some see further evidence of mutating species, others the effects of Noah’s flood.

1859 In “Origin of Species,” Charles Darwin concludes that species evolve and that change is driven by variations in offspring that are either favored or eliminated in the struggle for survival.

1871 Darwin publishes “The Descent of Man,” in which he undermines the Biblical doctrine that humans are a divine creation. Instead, he argues, mankind evolved from apes.

1905 John William Strutt determines the age of a rock: 2 billion years, officially disproving James Ussher’s 1650 assertion that, according to Genesis, the universe was created on Oct. 22, 4004 B.C.

1916 Albert Einstein’s groundbreaking theories of relativity reject Newton’s carefully ordered universe. “Science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind,” he later says.

1925 John Scopes, a high-school teacher in Tennessee, is indicted for teaching evolutionary theory. Scopes–along with Darwinism itself–is put on trial and convicted.

1948 George Gamow coins the term “big bang” to describe the theory that the universe began in a primeval explosion. An instantaneous creation leaves open the idea of a creator.

1965 Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson find that space is filled with background radiation, a discovery supporting the big-bang model. In 1989, the COBE satellite makes an image of this radiation.

1992 Pope John Paul II apologizes for the Roman Catholic Church’s condemnation of Galileo. Four years later, he endorses evolution as part of God’s master plan.

 

CHARLES TOWNES

PHYSICIST AND CHRISTIAN

He shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics for discovering the principles that underlie the laser. “As a religious person, I strongly sense. . .the presence and actions of a creative being far beyond myself and yet always personal and close by,” he says. Now at the University of California, Berkeley, Townes believes that recent discoveries in cosmology reveal “a universe that fits religious views”–specifically, that “somehow intelligence must have been involved in the laws of the universe.”

 

WILLIAM STOEGER

ASTRONOMER AND JESUIT PRIEST

Stoeger, who joined the Jesuits at 17, now teaches at the University of Arizona and is a member of the Vatican Observatory. “I did have one conflict between science and religion, in sixth or seventh grade,” he says. “I got a book on paleontology from my uncle Don, so I read it only at night when no-one else was around. This conflict [between evolution and Genesis] was wonderfully resolved in high school,” Stoeger says, when a priest showed him that the Bible could be read metaphorically.

 

S. JOCELYN BELL BURNELL

ASTRONOMER AND QUAKER

For some scholars, there are limits to the consilience of research and faith. Bell Burnell, discoverer of the spinning stars called pulsars, is active in the Religious Society of Friends. She wills herself to accept Christian theology, she says, because the absence of belief is too lonely and frightening a prospect. But she keeps her beliefs separate from her astronomy work at England’s Open University. “Would I do science differently if I weren’t a Quaker?” she asks. “I don’t think so.”

 

JOHN POLKINGHORNE

PHYSICIST TURNED PRIEST

After a distinguished career in particle physics, Polkinghorne was ordained an Anglican priest in 1982. “For me,” he explains, the fundamental component of belief in God “is that there is a mind and a purpose behind the universe.” He sees hints of that divine presence in how abstract mathematics can penetrate the universe’s secrets, which suggests that a rational mind created the world. As for purpose, he sees it in how nature is fine-tuned to allow life and consciousness to emerge. MARIAN WESTLEY © 1998

http://www.newsweek.com/id/93188

http://www.newsweek.com/id/93188/page/8

 

An Exclusive Interview with Former British Atheist Professor Antony Flew

Dear Friends:

The following is an exclusive interview that will be published in the Winter 2005 issue of “Philosophia Christi” the journal of the Evangelical Philosophical Society (www.biola.edu/philchristi). “Philosophia Christi” is one of the top circulating philosophy of religion journals in the world and we are pleased to offer up the definitive interview on this breaking story of global interest.

Prof. Antony Flew, 81 years old, is a legendary British philosopher and atheist and has been an icon and champion for unbelievers for decades. His change of mind is significant news, not only about his personal journey, but also about the persuasive power of the arguments modern theists have been using to challenge atheistic naturalism.

The interviewer is Dr. Gary Habermas, a prolific philosopher and historian from Liberty University who has debated Flew several times. They have maintained a friendship despite their years of disagreement on the existence of God.

Sincerely,

9 December 2004

Craig J. Hazen, Ph.D.

Professor of Comparative Religion, Biola University

Editor, “Philosophia Christi”

 

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My Pilgrimage from Atheism to Theism

An Exclusive Interview with Former British Atheist Professor Antony Flew

DR. ANTONY FLEW

Professor of Philosophy, Former atheist, author, and debater

DR. GARY R. HABERMAS

Professor Philosophy and Theology, Editorial Board for “Philosophia Christi”

Antony Flew and Gary Habermas met in February 1985 in Dallas, Texas. The occasion was a series of debates between atheists and theists, featuring many influential philosophers, scientists, and other scholars.¹

A short time later, in May 1985, Flew and Habermas debated at Liberty University before a large audience. The topic that night was the resurrection of Jesus.² Although Flew was arguably the world’s foremost philosophical atheist, he had intriguingly also earned the distinction of being one of the chief philosophical commentators on the topic of miracles.³

Habermas specialized on the subject of Jesus’ resurrection.⁴ Thus, the ensuing dialogue on the historical evidence for the central Christian claim was a natural outgrowth of their research. Over the next twenty years, Flew and Habermas developed a friendship, writing dozens of letters, talking often, and dialoguing twice more on the resurrection. In April 2000 they participated in a live debate on the Inspiration Television Network, moderated by John Ankerberg.⁵

In January 2003 they again dialogued on the resurrection at California Polytechnic State University–San Luis Obispo^.6

During a couple telephone discussions shortly after their last dialogue, Flew explained to Habermas that he was considering becoming a theist. While Flew did not change his position at that time, he concluded that certain philosophical and scientific considerations were causing him to do some serious rethinking. He characterized his position as that of atheism standing in tension with several huge question marks.

Then, a year later, in January 2004, Flew informed Habermas that he had indeed become a theist. While still rejecting the concept of special revelation, whether Christian, Jewish or Islamic, nonetheless he had concluded that theism was true. In Flew’s words, he simply “had to go where the evidence leads.”⁷

The following interview took place in early 2004 and was subsequently modified by both participants throughout the year. This nontechnical discussion sought to engage Flew over the course of several topics that reflect his move from atheism to theism.⁸ The chief purpose was not to pursue the details of any particular issue, so we bypassed many avenues that would have presented a plethora of other intriguing questions and responses. These were often tantalizingly ignored, left to ripen for another discussion. Neither did we try to persuade each another of alternate positions.

Our singular purpose was simply to explore and report Flew’s new position, allowing him to explain various aspects of his pilgrimage. We thought that this in itself was a worthy goal.

Along the way, an additional benefit emerged, as Flew reminisced about various moments from his childhood, graduate studies, and career.

HABERMAS: Tony, you recently told me that you have come to believe in the existence of God. Would you comment on that?

FLEW: Well, I don’t believe in the God of any revelatory system, although I am open to that. But it seems to me that the case for an Aristotelian God who has the characteristics of power and also intelligence, is now much stronger than it ever was before. And it was from Aristotle that Aquinas drew the materials for producing his five ways of, hopefully, proving the existence of his God. Aquinas took them, reasonably enough, to prove, if they proved anything, the existence of the God of the Christian revelation. But Aristotle himself never produced a definition of the word “God,” which is a curious fact. But this concept still led to the basic outline of the five ways. It seems to me, that from the existence of Aristotle’s God, you can’t infer anything about human behaviour. So what Aristotle had to say about justice (justice, of course, as conceived by the Founding Fathers of the American republic as opposed to the “social” justice of John Rawls⁹) was very much a human idea, and he thought that this idea of justice was what ought to govern the behaviour of individual human beings in their relations with others.

HABERMAS: Once you mentioned to me that your view might be called Deism. Do you think that would be a fair designation?

FLEW: Yes, absolutely right. What Deists, such as the Mr. Jefferson who drafted the American Declaration of Independence, believed was that, while reason, mainly in the form of arguments to design, assures us that there is a God, there is no room either for any supernatural revelation of that God or for any transactions between that God and individual human beings.

HABERMAS: Then, would you comment on your “openness” to the notion of theistic revelation?

FLEW: Yes. I am open to it, but not enthusiastic about potential revelation from God. On the positive side, for example, I am very much impressed with physicist Gerald Schroeder’s comments on Genesis 1.¹⁰ That this biblical account might be scientifically accurate raises the possibility that it is revelation.

HABERMAS: You very kindly noted that our debates and discussions had influenced your move in the direction of theism.¹¹ You mentioned that this initial influence contributed in part to your comment that naturalistic efforts have never succeeded in producing “a plausible conjecture as to how any of these complex molecules might have evolved from simple entities.”¹² Then in your recently rewritten introduction to the forthcoming edition of your classic volume God and Philosophy, you say that the original version of that book is now obsolete. You mention a number of trends in theistic argumentation that you find convincing, like big bang cosmology, fine tuning and Intelligent Design arguments. Which arguments for God’s existence did you find most persuasive?

FLEW: I think that the most impressive arguments for God’s existence are those that are supported by recent scientific discoveries. I’ve never been much impressed by the kalam cosmological argument, and I don’t think it has gotten any stronger recently. However, I think the argument to Intelligent Design is enormously stronger than it was when I first met it.

HABERMAS: So you like arguments such as those that proceed from big bang cosmology and fine tuning arguments?

FLEW: Yes.

HABERMAS: You also recently told me that you do not find the moral argument to be very persuasive. Is that right?

FLEW: That’s correct. It seems to me that for a strong moral argument, you’ve got to have God as the justification of morality. To do this makes doing the morally good a purely prudential matter rather than, as the moral philosophers of my youth used to call it, a good in itself.

(Compare the classic discussion in Plato’s Euthyphro.)

HABERMAS: So, take C. S. Lewis’s argument for morality as presented in Mere Christianity.¹³ You didn’t find that to be very impressive?

FLEW: No, I didn’t. Perhaps I should mention that, when I was in college, I attended fairly regularly the weekly meetings of C. S. Lewis’s Socratic Club. In all my time at Oxford these meetings were chaired by Lewis. I think he was by far the most powerful of Christian apologists for the sixty or more years following his founding of that club. As late as the 1970s, I used to find that, in the USA, in at least half of the campus bookstores of the universities and liberal art colleges which I visited, there was at least one long shelf devoted to his very various published works.

HABERMAS: Although you disagreed with him, did you find him to be a very reasonable sort of fellow?

FLEW: Oh yes, very much so, an eminently reasonable man.

HABERMAS: And what do you think about the ontological argument for the existence of God?

FLEW: All my later thinking and writing about philosophy was greatly influenced by my year of postgraduate study under the supervision of Gilbert Ryle, the then Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy in the University of Oxford, as well as the Editor of Mind. It was the very year in which his enormously influential work on The Concept of Mind¹⁴ was first published. I was told that, in the years between the wars, whenever another version of the ontological argument raised its head, Gilbert forthwith set himself to refute it.

My own initial lack of enthusiasm for the ontological argument developed into strong repulsion when I realized from reading the Theodicy¹⁵ of Leibniz that it was the identification of the concept of Being with the concept of Goodness (which ultimately derives from Plato’s identification in The Republic of the Form or Idea of the Good with the Form or the Idea of the Real) which enabled Leibniz in his Theodicy validly to conclude that an universe in which most human beings are predestined to an eternity of torture is the “best of all possible worlds.”

HABERMAS: So of the major theistic arguments, such as the cosmological, teleological, moral, and ontological, the only really impressive ones that you take to be decisive are the scientific forms of teleology?

FLEW: Absolutely. It seems to me that Richard Dawkins constantly overlooks the fact that Darwin himself, in the fourteenth chapter of The Origin of Species, pointed out that his whole argument began with a being which already possessed reproductive powers. This is the creature the evolution of which a truly comprehensive theory of evolution must give some account.

Darwin himself was well aware that he had not produced such an account. It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design.

HABERMAS: As I recall, you also refer to this in the new introduction to your God and Philosophy.

FLEW: Yes, I do; or, since the book has not yet been published, I will!

HABERMAS: Since you affirm Aristotle’s concept of God, do you think we can also affirm Aristotle’s implications that the First Cause hence knows all things?

FLEW: I suppose we should say this. I’m not at all sure what one should think concerning some of these very fundamental issues. There does seem to be a reason for a First Cause, but I’m not at all sure how much we have to explain here. What idea of God is necessary to provide an explanation of the existence of the universe and all which is in it?

HABERMAS: If God is the First Cause, what about omniscience, or omnipotence?

FLEW: Well, the First Cause, if there was a First Cause, has very clearly produced everything that is going on. I suppose that does imply creation “in the beginning.”

HABERMAS: In the same introduction, you also make a comparison between Aristotle’s God and Spinoza’s God. Are you implying, with some interpreters of Spinoza, that God is pantheistic?

FLEW: I’m noting there that God and Philosophy has become out of date and should now be seen as an historical document rather than as a direct contribution to current discussions. I’m sympathetic to Spinoza because he makes some statements which seem to me correctly to describe the human situation(TANRI ANLAYIŞINDA DEĞERLER EGEMEN OLMAYINCA PANTEIST SPINOZA’YA YAKIN HİSSETMESİ DE DOĞAL OLMAKTADIR. DEĞERLERDEN DOLAYI SAVRULAN SAVRUKLUĞUYLA KALIYOR.) But for me the most important thing about Spinoza is not what he says but what he does not say(DEĞERLER ÖNEMLİ OLMAYINCA SÖYLENİLMEYENLER ÖNEMLİ OLMAKTADIR). He does not say that God has any preferences either about or any intentions concerning human behaviour or about the eternal destinies of human beings(İŞTE BU PANTEİST GERÇEK. DEĞERLERDEN YOKSUNLUK).

HABERMAS: What role might your love for the writings of David Hume play in a discussion about the existence of God? Do you have any new insights on Hume, given your new belief in God?

FLEW: No, not really.

HABERMAS: Do you think Hume ever answers the question of God?

FLEW: I think of him as, shall we say, an unbeliever. But it’s interesting to note that he himself was perfectly willing to accept one of the conditions of his appointment, if he had been appointed to a chair of philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. That condition was, roughly speaking, to provide some sort of support and encouragement for people performing prayers and executing other acts of worship. I believe that Hume thought that the institution of religious belief could be, and in his day and place was, socially beneficial.¹⁶

I, too, having been brought up as a Methodist, have always been aware of this possible and in many times and places actual benefit of objective religious instruction. It is now several decades since I first tried to draw attention to the danger of relying on a modest amount of compulsory religious instruction in schools to meet the need for moral education, especially in a period of relentlessly declining religious belief. But all such warnings by individuals were, of course, ignored. So we now have in the UK a situation in which any mandatory requirements to instruct pupils in state funded schools in the teachings of the established or any other religion are widely ignored. The only official attempt to construct a secular substitute was vitiated by the inability of the moral philosopher on the relevant government committee to recognize the fundamental difference between justice without prefix or suffix and the “social” justice of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice.

I must some time send you a copy of the final chapter of my latest and presumably last book, in which I offer a syllabus and a program for moral education in secular schools.¹⁷ This is relevant and important for both the US and the UK. To the US because the Supreme Court has utterly misinterpreted the clause in the Constitution about not establishing a religion: misunderstanding it as imposing a ban on all official reference to religion. In the UK any effective program of moral education has to be secular because unbelief is now very widespread.

HABERMAS: In God and Philosophy, and in many other places in our discussions, too, it seems that your primary motivation for rejecting theistic arguments used to be the problem of evil. In terms of your new belief in God, how do you now conceptualise God’s relationship to the reality of evil in the world?

FLEW: Well, absent revelation, why should we perceive anything as objectively evil? The problem of evil is a problem only for Christians. For Muslims everything which human beings perceive as evil, just as much as everything we perceive as good, has to be obediently accepted as produced by the will of Allah. I suppose that the moment when, as a schoolboy of fifteen years, it first appeared to me that the thesis that the universe was created and is sustained by a Being of infinite power and goodness is flatly incompatible with the occurrence of massive undeniable and undenied evils in that universe, was the first step towards my future career as a philosopher! It was, of course, very much later that I learned of the philosophical identification of goodness with existence!

HABERMAS: In your view, then, God hasn’t done anything about evil.

FLEW: No, not at all, other than producing a lot of it.

HABERMAS: Given your theism, what about mind-body issues?

FLEW: I think those who want to speak about an afterlife have got to meet the difficulty of formulating a concept of an incorporeal person. Here I have again to refer back to my year as a graduate student supervised by Gilbert Ryle, in the year in which he published The Concept of Mind. At that time there was considerable comment, usually hostile, in the serious British press, on what was called “Oxford Linguistic Philosophy.” The objection was usually that this involved a trivialization of a very profound and important discipline.

I was by this moved to give a talk to the Philosophy Postgraduates Club under the title “Matter which Matters.” In it I argued that, so far from ignoring what Immanuel Kant described as the three great problems of philosophers—God, Freedom and Immortality—the linguistic approach promised substantial progress towards their solution.

I myself always intended to make contributions in all those three areas. Indeed my first philosophical publication was relevant to the third.¹⁸ Indeed it was not very long after I got my first job as a professional philosopher that I confessed to Ryle that if ever I was asked to deliver the Gifford Lectures I would give them under the title The Logic of Mortality.¹⁹ They were an extensive argument to the conclusion that it is simply impossible to create a concept of an incorporeal spirit.

HABERMAS: Is such a concept necessarily required for the notion of an afterlife?

FLEW: Dr. Johnson’s dictionary defines death as the soul leaving the body. If the soul is to be, as Dr. Johnson and almost if perhaps not quite everyone else in his day believed it to be, something which can sensibly be said to leave its present residence and to take up or be forced to take up residence elsewhere, then a soul must be, in the philosophical sense, a substance rather than merely a characteristic of something else.

My Gifford Lectures were published after Richard Swinburne published his, on The Evolution of the Soul.²⁰ So when mine were reprinted under the title Merely Mortal? Can You Survive Your Own Death?²¹ I might have been expected to respond to any criticisms which Swinburne had made of my earlier publications in the same area. But the embarrassing truth is that he had taken no notice of any previous relevant writings either by me or by anyone published since World War II. There would not have been much point in searching for books or articles before that date since Swinburne and I had been the only Gifford lecturers to treat the question of a future life for the sixty years past. Even more remarkably, Swinburne in his Gifford Lectures ignored Bishop Butler’s decisive observation: “Memory may reveal but cannot constitute personal identity.”

HABERMAS: On several occasions, you and I have dialogued regarding the subject of near death experiences, especially the specific sort where people have reported verifiable data from a distance away from themselves. Sometimes these reports even occur during the absence of heartbeat or brain waves.²² After our second dialogue you wrote me a letter and said that, “I find the materials about near death experiences so challenging. . . . this evidence equally certainly weakens if it does not completely refute my argument against doctrines of a future life . . . .”²³ In light of these evidential near death cases, what do you think about the possibility of an afterlife, especially given your theism?

FLEW: An incorporeal being may be hypothesized, and hypothesized to possess a memory. But before we could rely on its memory even of its own experiences we should need to be able to provide an account of how this hypothesized incorporeal being could be identified in the first place and then—after what lawyers call an affluxion of time—reidentified even by himself or herself as one and the same individual spiritual being. Until we have evidence that we have been and presumably—as Dr. Johnson and so many lesser men have believed—are to be identified with such incorporeal spirits I do not see why near-death experiences should be taken as evidence for the conclusion that human beings will enjoy a future life—or more likely if either of the two great revealed religions is true—suffer eternal torment.

HABERMAS: I agree that near death experiences do not evidence the doctrines of either heaven or hell. But do you think these evidential cases increase the possibility of some sort of an afterlife, again, given your theism?

FLEW: I still hope and believe there’s no possibility of an afterlife.

HABERMAS: Even though you hope there’s no afterlife, what do you think of the evidence that there might be such, as perhaps indicated by these evidential near death cases? And even if there is no clear notion of what sort of body might be implied here, do you find this evidence helpful in any way? In other words, apart from the form in which a potential afterlife might take, do you still find these to be evidence for something?

FLEW: It’s puzzling to offer an interpretation of these experiences. But I presume it has got to be taken as extrasensory perceiving by the flesh and blood person who is the subject of the experiences in question. What it cannot be is the hypothesized incorporeal spirit which you would wish to identify with the person who nearly died, but actually did not. For this concept of an incorporeal spirit cannot properly be assumed to have been given sense until and unless some means has been provided for identifying such spirits in the first place and re-identifying them as one and the same individual incorporeal spirits after the affluxion of time. Until and unless this has been done we have always to remember Bishop Butler’s objection: “Memory may reveal but cannot constitute personal identity.”²⁴

Perhaps I should here point out that, long before I took my first university course in philosophy, I was much interested in what in the UK, where it began, is still called psychical research although the term “parapsychology” is now usually almost everywhere else. Perhaps I ought here to confess that my first book was brashly entitled A New Approach to Psychical Research,²⁵ and my interest in this subject continued for many years thereafter.

HABERMAS: Actually you have also written to me that these near death experiences “certainly constitute impressive evidence for the possibility of the occurrence of human consciousness independent of any occurrences in the human brain.”²⁶