Antony Flew: Celebrated Convert or Believer in Drag?
Every culture and every “ism” likes its heroes. Not only in sport, but even in intellectual discourse, or matters of public debate, people love the spectacle of the titans clashing. We all love gladiatorial combat. Imagine, for example, how the media would relish a debate between Al Gore and Bjorn Lomborg. They would see their respective hero doing valiant battle on their behalf.
Christians are no exception. We too have our heroes of the faith, our trophies, our Abraham's, our David's, our Luther's. Recently many Christians have been cheered by the the prospect of another heroic trophy joining the ranks. One of the more notoriously intellectual atheists, Antony Flew has recently renounced atheism and pronounced his belief in a god. Now, Flew is 85, and some have churlishly claimed that his newfound belief represents the beginning of senile dementia and is not to be taken seriously. Flew, however, insists that he is of sound mind, and his position is based on inexorable rationalistic logic.
This has got many within Jerusalem excited. They have gotten even more excited because recently Flew has reviewed Dawkins's The God Delusion, and judges Dawkins to be a secular bigot. Wow. This is significant. Flew is a big hitter, once adjudged to be the world's most influential philosophical atheist. We guess that appellation will no long apply, but he appears to have come over to “our side”.
But as they say in the movies, “Not so fast.” We need to be far more discerning and critical here. The naïve credulity of many Christians is unbecoming. Oftentimes we are so desperate for good press that we will clutch at any straw.
Let's be very, very clear. Antony Flew, whatever opinions he holds and whatever beliefs he may have, does not believe in God; the God Who has revealed Himself in the Holy Scriptures; the God Who created all things—the entire universe—out of nothing by the utterance of His Word, in the space of six days; the God Who announces things from the beginning and from ancient times things which have not yet taken place, saying that He will do all things that please Him; and the God Who is One in three Persons. He apparently believes in a god. But then the Philistines believed in a god—in fact several of them. The Babylonians believed in Bel and Marduk. They were idolaters, and so, we regret to say, is Antony Flew.
Is this harsh? No, it is simply truthful and realistic. Flew has moved his position to one of being a deist. A deist, Flew tells us, is one who believes in the existence of a god (Flew writes “God”) but not, he tells us, the God of any revelation. Thus, whatever god Flew now believes in, it is not the God of the Scriptures. And to be blunt—but fair—if you are standing upon the holy ground of the Scriptures, you are bound to aver that since Flew does not believe in the God Who has revealed Himself in the Holy Scriptures, he must believe in a false god, an idol. An idol is a god of human construction and making. If you are standing upon God's ground, upon His holy Word, and there is no other ground upon which a Believer may stand, there is no other position to take.
Thus, in scriptural terms, Antony Flew remains an idolater. We say “remains” deliberately. All Unbelievers are idolaters—whether they profess belief in a god or not. All atheists are idolaters, believing in some kind of god, personal or impersonal. All Unbelievers believe something to be ultimate. All Unbelievers ground their belief in the mind and heart of Man as the ultimate basis for truth. They will inevitably point to some evidence, some argument, something which they find acceptable, which warrants their ultimate belief.
Richard Dawkins is a prime example. He is a useful illustration of the point because, on the one hand, he denies the existence of any god. He is an atheist. But, on the other hand, the ultimate ground for his position is the ratiocinations of his (and his colleagues') minds. Dawkins worships and serves his rationalistic faculty—which is to say that he worships and serves Man. The world is as Dawkins declares it to be. Further, the entire universe is as Dawkins declares it to be. Dawkins is not only his own self-interpreter, but the interpreter of every human being, the entire human race. He knows infallibly and authoritatively the ultimate truth about every human being that has ever lived or ever will live—or so he claims. He believes the entire human race conforms to “Dawkins-truth”.
Dawkins presumes to proclaim something truthful—truthful in an ultimate sense—about everything. In this sense, Dawkins is claiming omniscience. Further, since his mind and his declaration of “Dawkins-truth” has encompassed the entire universe he is also claiming he has a meaningful omnipresence throughout all reality, past, present, and future. These attributes, of course, are all attributes of deity. Dawkins is an idolater. He worships Man, and, in particular, Man as he is manifested and incarnated in himself.
Oh, and let us not decamp from the altar of Dawkins, without observing that these truth claims to say something universal and meaningful about all reality, about the entire universe, about the universal past, present, and future, are grounded upon the Dawkins-enunciated truth of the ultimate irrationality of the universe. Yes. Incredible, but true. This is why the Scripture says of Unbelievers: “professing to be wise, they became fools.” Could anyone be so stupid? Yes. It is the stock-in-trade of all Unbelief.
Flew worships the same god as Dawkins, albeit now in slightly different dress. His ratiocinations have led him to make similar claims about his own (Flew's) omniscience and his own omnipresence, but the difference with Dawkins is that he has arrived at a position where he wants to project his rationalising outside himself on to a being of some kind—which he calls god. This mental construct forms the useful function of offering an explanation for what Flew cannot explain. The attributes of this god are as Flew reveals them. He who reveals a god on the ground of his own ratiocinations, is god. Flew's world-view or religion has the presumption to think that the infinite mind of god and the finite mind of man are one and the same thing. But this is precisely the same world-view to which Dawkins also holds.
The debate between Flew and Dawkins is inter-mural, not intra-mural. It is a debate between the equally idolatrous. It is an argument over the respective merits of two idols. But Dawkins and Flew have a common ground—common ground that is both deep and broad. Both believe that all meaning, the infallible revelation and interpretation of all being and the whole universe, resides in the mind of Man.
They remain as true seed of the Serpent. Flew, regrettably, is not a hero of the Faith. Neither will he become so, unless it pleases the Spirit to regenerate him from above. But then he will delight to profess the one true God, and Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son, our Lord.
No comments:
Post a Comment