It doesn't typically happen. For they typically deny that they even have a mind to change and exchange it for just a brain. If they only had a mind.
This one is no C.S. Lewis, unfortunately. But it is still an interesting story:
"....One of the most renowned atheists of the past half century has changed his mind and decided that there is a God after all.
Antony Flew, 81, emeritus professor of philosophy at Reading University, whose arguments for atheism have influenced scholars around the world, has been converted to the view that some sort of deity created the universe. Flew, the son of a Methodist minister, is keen to repent. "As people have certainly been influenced by me, I want to try and correct the enormous damage I may have done," he said yesterday. But he is unlikely to proclaim his faith from a pulpit. He is still not a Christian and dismisses the conventional forms of divinity as "the monstrous oriental despots of the religions of Christianity and Islam." [The Big Meanie syndrome, etc., a sort of Cosmic Oedipal complex is often mixed into atheism.] He also stands by his rejection of an afterlife.
Instead, he believes that new scientific discoveries have revealedthe existence of an organising intelligence. Investigation of DNA, he said, "has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce life, that intelligence must have been involved". Darwin's theory of evolution does not explain the origin and development of life to Flew's satisfaction. "I have been persuaded that it is simply out of the question that the first living matter evolved out of dead matter and then developed into an extraordinarily complicated creature," he said. Flew finds the conventional explanation that life arose out of a complex chemical brew or primordial soup "improbable." So he is emulating Socrates and "following the argument wherever it leads. The conclusion is-there must have been some intelligence".
His volte face is all the more remarkable given his vehement denial of internet rumours in 2001 that he had renounced his atheism. His response was entitled: "Sorry To Disappoint, but I'm Still an Atheist!"
He has always described himself as a "negative atheist", asserting the impossibility of either verifying or disproving the existence of God, a position he explained in his 1950 paper Theology and Falsification, reprinted 40 times in many languages. [I.e., the modern atheistic tendency to change atheism to agnosticism. It's really quite typical and perhaps illustrates the weakness of atheism for now. I believe a pattern of principles will rise again one day, like a principality, a Beast that was only wounded. Sure is nice to live now, if that speculation is true.] His revised views are likely to cause as big a commotion as the astronomer royal's recent speculation that the universe could be no more than a computer simulation, with humans reduced to bits of software.
Sir Martin Rees, Royal Society professor of astronomy at Cambridge University, said in a Channel 4 television documentary that on current trends that computers would be able to simulate worlds as complicated as the one we inhabit -or think we do. "This raises the philosophical question: could we ourselves bein such a simulation and could what we think is the universe be some sort of vault of heaven rather than the real thing?" he asked.
[That is getting to gnosticism, back again! The Matrix....etc., that notion has been around since ancient times in philosophy.]
Flew became an atheist at 15 and went on to proclaim his non-credo while teaching at Oxford, Aberdeen, Keele and Reading universities.The professor is now revising the introduction to one of his 23 books, God and Philosophy, incorporating his revised ideas.
"I am certain I shall surprise a lot of people," he said.
[........]"
(Sunday Times (London)
December 12, 2004, Sunday
SECTION: Home news; News; 7
HEADLINE: Sorry, says atheist-in-chief, I do believe in God after all
BYLINE: Stuart Wavell and Will Iredale)
Saturday, January 08, 2005
A Comparison.....
It is striking how opposite Americanism and Nazism are, in some ways. One seeks to destroy the "Jewish influence" and the other wanted to link up to it.
"Puritanism had two main elements: the Calvinist belief in predestination with associated religious doctrines, and what we might call a “political” doctrine. The “political” goal of Puritanism was to reach back to the pure Christianity of the New Testament—and then even farther back. Puritans spoke of themselves as God’s new chosen people, living in God’s new promised land—in short, as God’s new Israel."
Americanism—and Its Enemies
By David Gelernter
I came across this sometimes.
Example,
"Fellow-citizens, the ark of your covenant is the Declaration of Independence. Your Mount Ebal, is the confederacy of separate state sovereignties, and your Mount Gerizim is the Constitution of the United States. In that scene of tremendous and awful solemnity,narrated in the Holy Scriptures, there is not a curse pronounced against thepeople, upon Mount Ebal, not a blessing promised them upon Mount Gerizim, which your posterity may not suffer or enjoy, from your and their adherence to, or departure from, the principles of the Declaration of Independence, practically interwoven into the Constitution of theUnited States. Lay up these principles, then, in your hearts, and in your souls - bind them for signs upon your hands, that they may be frontlets between your eyes - teach them to your children, speaking of them when sitting in your houses, when walking by the way, when lying down and when rising up - write them upon the doorplates of your houses, and upon your gates - cling to them as to the issues of life - adhere to them as to the cords ofyour eternal salvation. So may your children'schildren at the next return of this day of jubilee, after a full century of experience under your national Constitution, celebrate it again in the full enjoyment of all the blessings recognized by you in the commemoration of this day, and of all the blessings promisedto the children of Israel upon Mount Gerizim, as the reward of your obedience to the law of God."
("The Jubilee of the Constitution," A discourse delivered at the request of the New York Historical Society in the City of New York, on Tuesday, the 30th of April, 1839, being the fiftieth anniversaryof the Inauguration of George Washington as the President of the United States, on Thursday,the 30th of April, 1789;
by John Quincy Adams
(entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1839, by Joseph Blunt, for the NewYork Historical Society, in the District Court of the Southern District of New York, at 56)
Notice the way he linked the Constitution to the Declaration and the Declaration to monotheistic religious roots. I am reminded of the way in which Lincoln would cite the Declaration more than the Constitution, as the Constitution was a political document of compromise. The modern Leftist judge, by contrast, is one step away from declaring the Declaration "unconstitutional." Actually, they essentially do that already. It is ironic, for it was constitutional compromises that defined some groups of people as three-fifths human, etc. For the tolerance of compromise!
I wonder if perhaps America did what America was raised up to do and now will decline. Or if there is more to do. It's something to think about.
"Puritanism had two main elements: the Calvinist belief in predestination with associated religious doctrines, and what we might call a “political” doctrine. The “political” goal of Puritanism was to reach back to the pure Christianity of the New Testament—and then even farther back. Puritans spoke of themselves as God’s new chosen people, living in God’s new promised land—in short, as God’s new Israel."
Americanism—and Its Enemies
By David Gelernter
I came across this sometimes.
Example,
"Fellow-citizens, the ark of your covenant is the Declaration of Independence. Your Mount Ebal, is the confederacy of separate state sovereignties, and your Mount Gerizim is the Constitution of the United States. In that scene of tremendous and awful solemnity,narrated in the Holy Scriptures, there is not a curse pronounced against thepeople, upon Mount Ebal, not a blessing promised them upon Mount Gerizim, which your posterity may not suffer or enjoy, from your and their adherence to, or departure from, the principles of the Declaration of Independence, practically interwoven into the Constitution of theUnited States. Lay up these principles, then, in your hearts, and in your souls - bind them for signs upon your hands, that they may be frontlets between your eyes - teach them to your children, speaking of them when sitting in your houses, when walking by the way, when lying down and when rising up - write them upon the doorplates of your houses, and upon your gates - cling to them as to the issues of life - adhere to them as to the cords ofyour eternal salvation. So may your children'schildren at the next return of this day of jubilee, after a full century of experience under your national Constitution, celebrate it again in the full enjoyment of all the blessings recognized by you in the commemoration of this day, and of all the blessings promisedto the children of Israel upon Mount Gerizim, as the reward of your obedience to the law of God."
("The Jubilee of the Constitution," A discourse delivered at the request of the New York Historical Society in the City of New York, on Tuesday, the 30th of April, 1839, being the fiftieth anniversaryof the Inauguration of George Washington as the President of the United States, on Thursday,the 30th of April, 1789;
by John Quincy Adams
(entered according to the Act of Congress, in the year 1839, by Joseph Blunt, for the NewYork Historical Society, in the District Court of the Southern District of New York, at 56)
Notice the way he linked the Constitution to the Declaration and the Declaration to monotheistic religious roots. I am reminded of the way in which Lincoln would cite the Declaration more than the Constitution, as the Constitution was a political document of compromise. The modern Leftist judge, by contrast, is one step away from declaring the Declaration "unconstitutional." Actually, they essentially do that already. It is ironic, for it was constitutional compromises that defined some groups of people as three-fifths human, etc. For the tolerance of compromise!
I wonder if perhaps America did what America was raised up to do and now will decline. Or if there is more to do. It's something to think about.
Thursday, January 06, 2005
The offspring of this blog...
....another post, on marriage. From Left2Right to Right2Left....
It's a little boring, but topical.
Later.
It's a little boring, but topical.
Later.
People who won't comment here....
....but do comment here or there. It's on the distinction between mind and brain or mind and matter. He does not believe that wondering is a wonder of the world. So he is picking up on a detail, like those who jot and tittle you to death typically do. They do, in some lack of sense, do it to death.
Begin the dissection!
To be fair, I will put a side note in the comment here that he's referring to with a link to his blog. So that people can know about another cold toad and one of their dissections.
I like these cold toads that look at you with their beady eyes after one of their dissections and crooak, "I, the cold toad, render my verdict upon thy ignorant head! .....and, all the other toadies agree!"
And so on. For they are each other's little toadies, always pointing their lil' feet at a crowd of cold toads and then croaking that you ought to believe them.
They hop, hop around. But there's still always a little trail of excrement behind them.
Later.
Begin the dissection!
To be fair, I will put a side note in the comment here that he's referring to with a link to his blog. So that people can know about another cold toad and one of their dissections.
I like these cold toads that look at you with their beady eyes after one of their dissections and crooak, "I, the cold toad, render my verdict upon thy ignorant head! .....and, all the other toadies agree!"
And so on. For they are each other's little toadies, always pointing their lil' feet at a crowd of cold toads and then croaking that you ought to believe them.
They hop, hop around. But there's still always a little trail of excrement behind them.
Later.
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
The Garden VI
So the mother helped the son by watering the plants around him. The father also helped the son sometimes too, on the day that he had his own little gardening plant in the garden.
The father knew something about the pollution in the garden. It was made to eat up his work. For the neighbor had done this on purpose because of their old animosity to each other. The yellowish brown pollution that got into his gardening plants was like tiny little anti-gardening plants that would eat them up and eat up his garden too.
But they were like little parasites that could not be seen by the plants very well. They worked by giving some good feelings as they ate. Then one day, their host plant would feel them very strongly, once there was not much more to eat. Most of the time, the host plant did not notice them so much. The importance of this, which the father knew, was that the pollution was alive and wanted to get into the son's lil' gardening plant. So although the son was teaching the other gardening plants the way things were and was good to them, the ones that got taken over by pollution hated his plant very much. They said, "Me no like!" There was no reason for it. And so, slowly the living pollution was gathering around the section of the garden that the plant of the son was in. So more plants there began to say, "Me no like!"
The son already knew that this would happen because his father had told him that it would. He told the gardening plants at one point that the pollution was not their fault, but a dark day would come unto this generation of plants through who it came anyway.
So it got to the point where all the plants around the plant of the son had a high concentration of the pollution. The little gardening plants were just insane with it. It wanted to come out and get in the plant of the son, to eat it. The son asked his father, "Isn't there some other way to deal with the pollution?" But his father had gone inside. He had told the son that the garden was his responsibility, since he was the one who wanted to go to the trouble of saving it.
So all the polluted gardening plants gathered around the plant of the son and ripped at him, then ripped him apart. It hurt the son. But there was something in his plant that had already started to work against the pollution just as all his communication had and it made the pollution start to eat itself instead of his plants, just a little bit for then. The father came back out to check on things and said, "So, do you still want to save those plants after all this?" His son replied, "Yes...." To which his dad said, "I am very proud of you, son. You're a very good gardener, making things for your plants instead of eating them up. This was my disagreement with the neighbor. He was always eating plants, not just their fruit but all of them. Even the gardening ones, it was disgusting. He is not very creative. You've done such a good job here that I think you should come and help me build our new house and garden. Your mother can finish here."
"But first we have a few things to do here." So the father and son went and picked up the pieces of the plant of the son and took it inside. There, they put it all back together. Then he used his plant in the garden for a little while longer. He put it back into the garden and told the gardening plants about how he was going to go prepare a new place. Then he told them that his mother would finish gardening. She was the one he told them to come to him to get water from, the one who had been watering them. She new how to garden well.
After that, he had his plant come back to the fence they had built inbetween the backporch of their house and their garden. Some of his lil' gardening plants followed him and they saw the gate open up and some other lil' gardening plants that had sat on the rocks up behind the gate on the porch. They had followed the son and were there to see the plant of the son taken to the greenhouse. In the greenhous there were also gardening plants waiting to see the special plant he had made to fight the pollution.
The son went to help the father build their new house. His mother began to garden the polluted garden, she was a very good gardener, so the little gardening plants began to be better gardeners than ever before.
Yet the pollution was still there as moving day approached.
There were many generations of gardening plants after the plant of the son was in the garden, just as there were before.
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