Antony Flew on God and Atheism

____ Does God Exist? Thomas Warren vs. Antony Flew Published on Jan 2, 2014 Date: September 20-23, 1976 Location: North Texas State University Christian debater: Thomas B. Warren Atheist debater: Antony G.N. Flew For Thomas Warren: http://www.warrenapologeticscenter.org/ ______________________ Antony Flew and his conversion to theism Uploaded on Aug 12, 2011 Antony Flew, a well known […]

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Educated Scholars like Antony Flew can believe in God!!!

__________ Discussion (1 of 3): Antony Flew, N.T. Wright, and Gary Habermas Uploaded on Sep 22, 2010 A discussion with Antony Flew, N.T. Wright, and Gary Habermas. This was held at Westminster Chapel March, 2008 Debate – William Lane Craig vs Christopher Hitchens – Does God Exist? Uploaded on Jan 27, 2011 April 4, 2009 – Craig […]

Antony Flew rightly noted that Richard Dawkins’ “monkey theorem was a load of rubbish”

________ William Lane Craig versus Eddie Tabash Debate Uploaded on Feb 6, 2012 Secular Humanism versus Christianity, Lawyer versus Theologian. Evangelical Christian apologist William Lane Craig debates humanist atheist lawyer Eddie Tabash at Pepperdine University, February 8, 1999. Visit http://www.Infidels.org andhttp://www.WilliamLaneCraig.com ________________ Antony Flew on God and Atheism Published on Feb 11, 2013 Lee […]

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Article from 2005 indicated Antony Flew abandoned atheism because of Law of Biogenesis!!!!

___________ Does God Exist? Thomas Warren vs. Antony Flew Published on Jan 2, 2014 Date: September 20-23, 1976 Location: North Texas State University Christian debater: Thomas B. Warren Atheist debater: Antony G.N. Flew For Thomas Warren: http://www.warrenapologeticscenter.org/ ______________________ Antony Flew and his conversion to theism Uploaded on Aug 12, 2011 Antony Flew, a well known […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Tagged Andrew Klavan, Antony Flew,C.S.Lewis, chuck colson, Gary Habermas, Jonathan Witt, Michael Behe, Phillip Johnson,Stuart Wavell, Will Iredale, William Dembski | Edit | Comments (0)

The Christian influence on society is real and that is one of the reasons Antony Flew left Atheism!!!

_____________ Antony Flew on God and Atheism Published on Feb 11, 2013 Lee Strobel interviews philosopher and scholar Antony Flew on his conversion from atheism to deism. Much of it has to do with intelligent design. Flew was considered one of the most influential and important thinker for atheism during his time before his death […]

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Antony Flew, George Wald and David Noebel on the Origin of Life

___________ Does God Exist?: William Lane Craig vs Antony Flew Uploaded on Dec 16, 2010 http://drcraigvideos.blogspot.com – William Lane Craig and Antony Flew met in 1998 on the 50th anniversary of the famous Copleston/Russell debate to discuss the question of God’s existence in a public debate. Unlike Richard Dawkins, Flew was one of the most respected […]

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The Fine Tuning Argument for the Existence of God from Antony Flew!

___________ ________ Jesus’ Resurrection: Atheist, Antony Flew, and Theist, Gary Habermas, Dialogue Published on Apr 7, 2012 http://www.veritas.org/talks –Did Jesus die, was he buried, and what happened afterward? Join legendary atheist Antony Flew and Christian historian and apologist Gary Habermas in a discussion about the facts surrounding the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Join […]

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Mark Oppenheimer of Time Magazine claims Antony Flew was convinced by PSEUDOSCIENCE that God exists!!!

___________ ________ Antony Flew – World’s Most Famous Atheist Accepts Existence of God Uploaded on Nov 28, 2008 Has Science Discovered God? A half-century ago, in 1955, Professor Antony Flew set the agenda for modern atheism with his Theology and Falsification, a paper presented in a debate with C.S. Lewis. This work became the most […]

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A review of “There is a God” by Antony Flew March 31, 2012

________ Antony Flew on God and Atheism Published on Feb 11, 2013 Lee Strobel interviews philosopher and scholar Antony Flew on his conversion from atheism to deism. Much of it has to do with intelligent design. Flew was considered one of the most influential and important thinker for atheism during his time before his death […]

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Review of Antony Flew Book: THERE IS A GOD Article by R.C. Sproul May 2008

This is Lester Mondale’s obituary from the American Humanist Association:

Discussion (2 of 3): Antony Flew, N.T. Wright, and Gary Habermas ______________ Atheist Lawrence Krauss loses debate to wiser Christian Published on Sep 13, 2013 http://www.reasonablefaith.org More of this here The Bible and Science (Part 02) The Kalam Cosmological Argument (Scientific Evidence) (Henry Schaefer, PhD) Published on Jun 11, 2012 Scientist Dr. Henry “Fritz” Schaefer gives a lecture […]

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The Glaring Weakness of the Humanist Manifestos (Plus video of Ricky Gervais on the lack of an afterlife)

April 14, 2014 – 2:24 pm

Ricky Gervais act outs atheist bewilderment and frustration in the face of nice Christian nonsense

Carl Sagan – Parents

Carl Sagan said that he missed his parents terribly and he wished he could believe in the afterlife but he was not convinced because of the lack of proof. I had the opportunity to correspond back and forth with Carl Sagan. I presented him evidence that the Bible was true and there was an afterlife, but he would not accept the evidence.

Today I want to take another approach to the issue of the afterlife and that is the pure and simple fact that without an enforcement factor people can do what they want in this life and get away with it. This is a big glaring weakness in the Humanist Manifestos that have been published so far. All three of them do not recognize the existence of God who is our final judge. (I am not claiming that this is evidence that points to an afterlife, but this post will demonstrate that atheists many times have not thought through the full ramifications of their philosophy of life.)

I had the unique opportunity to discuss this very issue with Robert Lester Mondale and his wife Rosemary on April 14, 1996 at his cabin in Fredricktown, Missouri , and my visit was very enjoyable and informative. Mr. Mondale had the distinction of being the only person to sign all three of the Humanist Manifestos in 1933, 1973 and 2003. I asked him which signers of Humanist Manifesto Number One did he know well and he said that Raymond B. Bragg, and Edwin H. Wilson and him were known as “the three young radicals of the group.” Harold P. Marley used to have a cabin near his and they used to take long walks together, but Marley’s wife got a job in Hot Springs, Arkansas and they moved down there.

Roy Wood Sellars was a popular professor of philosophy that he knew. I asked if he knew John Dewey and he said he did not, but Dewey did contact him one time to ask him some questions about an article he had written, but Mondale could not recall anything else about that.

Mondale told me some stories about his neighbors and we got to talking about some of his church members when he was an Unitarian pastor. Once during the 1930’s he was told by one of his wealthier Jewish members that he shouldn’t continue to be critical of the Nazis. This member had just come back from Germany and according to him Hitler had done a great job of getting the economy moving and things were good.

Of course, just a few years later after World War II was over Mondale discovered on a second hand basis what exactly had happened over there when he visited with a Lutheran pastor friend who had just returned from Germany. This Lutheran preacher was one of the first to be allowed in after the liberation of the concentration camps in 1945, and he told Mondale what level of devastation and destruction of innocent lives went on inside these camps. As Mondale listened to his friend he could feel his own face turning pale.

I asked, “If those Nazis escaped to Brazil or Argentina and lived out their lives in peace would they face judgment after they died?”

Mondale responded, “I don’t think there is anything after death.”

I told Mr. Mondale that there is sense in me that says justice will be given eventually and God will judge those Nazis even if they evade punishment here on earth. I did point out that in Ecclesiastes 4:1 Solomon did note that without God in the picture the scales may not be balanced in this life and power could reign, but at the same time the Bible teaches that all must face the ultimate Judge.

Then I asked him if he got to watch the O.J. Simpson trial and he said that he did and he thought that the prosecution had plenty of evidence too. Again I asked Mr. Mondale the same question concerning O.J. and he responded, “I don’t think there is a God that will intervene and I don’t believe in the afterlife.”

Dan Guinn posted on his blog at http://www.francisschaefferstudies.org concerning the Nazis and evolution: As Schaeffer points out, “…these ideas helped produce an even more far-reaching yet logical conclusion: the Nazi movement in Germany. Heinrich Himmler (1900-1945), leader of the Gestapo, stated that the law of nature must take its course in the survival of the fittest. The result was the gas chambers. Hitler stated numerous times that Christianity and its notion of charity should be “replaced by the ethic of strength over weakness.” Surely many factors were involved in the rise of National Socialism in Germany. For example, the Christian consensus had largely been lost by the undermining from a rationalistic philosophy and a romantic pantheism on the secular side, and a liberal theology (which was an adoption of rationalism in theological terminology) in the universities and many of the churches. Thus biblical Christianity was no longer giving the consensus for German society. After World War I came political and economic chaos and a flood of moral permissiveness in Germany. Thus, many factors created the situation. But in that setting the theory of the survival of the fittest sanctioned what occurred. ”

Francis Schaeffer notes that this idea ties into today when we are actually talking about making infanticide legal in some academic settings. Look at what these three humanist scholars have written:

Peter Singer, who recently was seated in an endowed chair at Princeton’s Center for Human Values, said, “Killing a disabled infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Very often it is not wrong at all.”
In May 1973, James D. Watson, the Nobel Prize laureate who discovered the double helix of DNA, granted an interview to Prism magazine, then a publication of the American Medical Association. Time later reported the interview to the general public, quoting Watson as having said, “If a child were not declared alive until three days after birth, then all parents could be allowed the choice only a few are given under the present system. The doctor could allow the child to die if the parents so choose and save a lot of misery and suffering. I believe this view is the only rational, compassionate attitude to have.”
In January 1978, Francis Crick, also a Nobel laureate, was quoted in the Pacific News Service as saying “… no newborn infant should be declared human until it has passed certain tests regarding its genetic endowment and that if it fails these tests it forfeits the right to live.”

Woody Allen’s 1989 movie, CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS , was on this very subject of the Nazis that Lester Mondale and I discussed on that day in 1996 at Mondale’s cabin in Missouri. In this film, Allen attacks his own atheistic view of morality. Martin Landau plays a Jewish eye doctor named Judah Rosenthal raised by a religious father who always told him, “The eyes of God are always upon you.” However, Judah later concludes that God doesn’t exist. He has his mistress (played in the film by Anjelica Huston) murdered because she continually threatened to blow the whistle on his past questionable, probably illegal, business activities. She also attempted to break up Judah’s respectable marriage by going public with their two-year affair. Judah struggles with his conscience throughout the remainder of the movie and continues to be haunted by his father’s words: “The eyes of God are always upon you.” This is a very scary phrase to a young boy, Judah observes. He often wondered how penetrating God’s eyes are.

Later in the film, Judah reflects on the conversation his religious father had with Judah ‘s unbelieving Aunt May at the dinner table many years ago:

“Come on Sol, open your eyes. Six million Jews burned to death by the Nazis, and they got away with it because might makes right,” says aunt May

Sol replies, “May, how did they get away with it?”

Judah asks, “If a man kills, then what?”

Sol responds to his son, “Then in one way or another he will be punished.”

Aunt May comments, “I say if he can do it and get away with it and he chooses not to be bothered by the ethics, then he is home free.”

Judah ‘s final conclusion was that might did make right. He observed that one day, because of this conclusion, he woke up and the cloud of guilt was gone. He was, as his aunt said, “home free.”

Woody Allen has exposed a weakness in his own humanistic view that God is not necessary as a basis for good ethics. There must be an enforcement factor in order to convince Judah not to resort to murder. Otherwise, it is fully to Judah ‘s advantage to remove this troublesome woman from his life. CAN A MATERIALIST OR A HUMANIST THAT DOES NOT BELIEVE IN AN AFTERLIFE GIVE JUDAH ONE REASON WHY HE SHOULDN’T HAVE HIS MISTRESS KILLED?

The Bible tells us, “{God} has also set eternity in the hearts of men…” (Ecclesiastes 3:11 NIV). The secularist calls this an illusion, but the Bible tells us that the idea that we will survive the grave was planted in everyone’s heart by God Himself. Romans 1:19-21 tells us that God has instilled a conscience in everyone that points each of them to Him and tells them what is right and wrong (also Romans 2:14 -15).

It’s no wonder, then, that one of Allen’s fellow humanists would comment, “Certain moral truths — such as do not kill, do not steal, and do not lie — do have a special status of being not just ‘mere opinion’ but bulwarks of humanitarian action. I have no intention of saying, ‘I think Hitler was wrong.’ Hitler WAS wrong.” (Gloria Leitner, “A Perspective on Belief,” THE HUMANIST, May/June 1997, pp. 38-39)

Here Leitner is reasoning from her God-given conscience and not from humanist philosophy. It wasn’t long before she received criticism. Humanist Abigail Ann Martin responded, “Neither am I an advocate of Hitler; however, by whose criteria is he evil?” (THE HUMANIST, September/October 1997, p. 2)

On the April 13, 2014 episode of THE GOOD WIFE called “The Materialist,” Alicia in a custody case asks the father Professor Mercer some questions about his own academic publications. She reads from his book that he is a “materialist and he believes that “free-will is just an illusion,” and we are all just products of the physical world and that includes our thoughts and emotions and there is no basis for calling anything right or wrong. Sounds like to me the good professor would agree wholeheartedly with the humanist Abigail Ann Martin’s assertion concerning Hitler’s morality too! Jean-Paul Sartre noted, “No finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point.”

Christians agree with Judah ‘s father that “The eyes of God are always upon us.” Proverbs 5:21 asserts, “For the ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and He ponders all his paths.” Revelation 20:12 states, “…And the dead were judged (sentenced) by what they had done (their whole way of feeling and acting, their aims and endeavors) in accordance with what was recorded in the books” (Amplified Version). The Bible is revealed truth from God. It is the basis for our morality. Judah inherited the Jewish ethical values of the Ten Commandments from his father, but, through years of life as a skeptic, his standards had been lowered. Finally, we discover that Judah ‘s secular version of morality does not resemble his father’s biblically-based morality.

Woody Allen’s CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS forces unbelievers to grapple with the logical conclusions of a purely secular morality, and the secularist has no basis for asserting that Judah is wrong.

Larry King actually mentioned on his show, LARRY KING LIVE, that Chuck Colson had discussed the movie CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS with him. Colson asked King if life was just a Darwinian struggle where the ruthless come out on top. Colson continued, “When we do wrong, is that our only choice? Either live tormented by guilt, or else kill our conscience and live like beasts?” (BREAKPOINT COMMENTARY, “Finding Common Ground,” September 14, 1993)

Josef Mengele tortured and murdered many Jews and then lived the rest of his long life out in South America in peace. Will he ever face judgment for his actions?

The ironic thing is that at the end of our visit I that pointed out to Mr. Mondale that Paul Kurtz had said in light of the horrible events in World War II that Kurtz witnessed himself in the death camps (Kurtz entered a death camp as an U.S. Soldier to liberate it) that it was obvious that Humanist Manifesto I was way too optimistic and it was necessary to come up with another one. I thought that might encourage Mr. Mondale to comment further on our earlier conversion concerning evil deeds, but he just said, “That doesn’t surprise me that Kurtz would say something like that.”

I noticed in Wikipedia:

The second Humanist Manifesto was written in 1973 by Paul Kurtz and Edwin H. Wilson, and was intended to update the previous one. It begins with a statement that the excesses of Nazism and world war had made the first seem “far too optimistic”, and indicated a more hardheaded and realistic approach in its seventeen-point statement, which was much longer and more elaborate than the previous version. Nevertheless, much of the unbridled optimism of the first remained, with hopes stated that war would become obsolete and poverty would be eliminated.

_________________

R. Lester Mondale of Fredricktown, Missouri died on August 19, 2003, he was ninety-nine years old. Mondale was the last living signer of Humanist Manifesto I (he was the youngest to sign in 1933). He was also the only person to sign all three manifestos.

An AHA member perhaps since the organization’s founding, he received the AHA’s Humanist Pioneer award in 1973 and the Humanist Founder award in 2001. Mondale became a Unitarian minister after being raised a Methodist.

He was very active with the American Humanist Association, the American Ethical Union and served as president of the Fellowship of Religious Humanists in the 60’s and 70’s. Humanists Vice President Sarah Oelberg says that Mondale’s death marks “truly the end of an era” and AHA Director of Planned Giving Bette Chambers calls him “a great man, a great Humanist.”

Lester is survived by his wife, Rosemary, and four daughters: Karen Mondale of St. Louis, Missouri; Julia Jensen of St. Cloud, Minnesota; Tarrie Swenstad of Odin, Minnesota; and Ellen Mondale of Bethesda, Maryland. Also surviving him are his three brothers: Walter Mondale, former vice president of the United States, Pete Mondale, and Morton Mondale. Lester Mondale was also a proud grandparent of seven and a great-grandparent.

The Mondale siblings: Lester, Walter, Mort, Pete, and Clifford and Eleanor Archer (adopted sister); credit: University of Minnesota Law Library Archives

______________

Crimes and Misdemeanors: A Discussion: Part 1

Uploaded by camdiscussion on Sep 23, 2007

Part 1 of 3: ‘What Does Judah Believe?’
A discussion of Woody Allen’s 1989 movie, perhaps his finest.
By Anton Scamvougeras.

http://camdiscussion.blogspot.com/
antons@mail.ubc.ca

________________________

Crimes and Misdemeanors: A Discussion: Part 2

Crimes and Misdemeanors: A Discussion: Part 3

Is the Bible historically accurate? Here are some of the posts I have done in the past on the subject: 1. The Babylonian Chronicle, of Nebuchadnezzars Siege of Jerusalem, 2. Hezekiah’s Siloam Tunnel Inscription. 3. Taylor Prism (Sennacherib Hexagonal Prism), 4. Biblical Cities Attested Archaeologically. 5. The Discovery of the Hittites, 6.Shishak Smiting His Captives, 7. Moabite Stone, 8. Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, 9A Verification of places in Gospel of John and Book of Acts., 9B Discovery of Ebla Tablets. 10. Cyrus Cylinder, 11. Puru “The lot of Yahali” 9th Century B.C.E., 12. The Uzziah Tablet Inscription, 13. The Pilate Inscription, 14. Caiaphas Ossuary, 14 B Pontius Pilate Part 2, 14c. Three greatest American Archaeologists moved to accept Bible’s accuracy through archaeology.,

The Bible and Archaeology (2/5)

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Former atheist Antony Flew pointed out that natural selection can’t explain the origin of first life and in every other case, information necessarily points to an intelligent source!

April 14, 2014 – 1:26 am

______________ Does God Exist? Thomas Warren vs. Antony Flew Published on Jan 2, 2014 Date: September 20-23, 1976 Location: North Texas State University Christian debater: Thomas B. Warren Atheist debater: Antony G.N. Flew For Thomas Warren: http://www.warrenapologeticscenter.org/ ______________________ Antony Flew and his conversion to theism Uploaded on Aug 12, 2011 Antony Flew, a well known spokesperson […]

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DARWINISM RECONSIDERED article from 2005 quotes Antony Flew, Richard Dawkins, Jonathan Miller, and Phillip Johnson

April 11, 2014 – 1:10 am

______________ William Lane Craig versus Eddie Tabash Debate Uploaded on Feb 6, 2012 Secular Humanism versus Christianity, Lawyer versus Theologian. Evangelical Christian apologist William Lane Craig debates humanist atheist lawyer Eddie Tabash at Pepperdine University, February 8, 1999. Visithttp://www.Infidels.org and http://www.WilliamLaneCraig.com ________________ Antony Flew on God and Atheism Published on Feb 11, 2013 Lee Strobel […]

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Antony Flew interviewed by Benjamin Wiker and the two reasons Flew left atheism!!!

April 10, 2014 – 1:57 am

_______________________ Discussion (1 of 3): Antony Flew, N.T. Wright, and Gary Habermas Uploaded on Sep 22, 2010 A discussion with Antony Flew, N.T. Wright, and Gary Habermas. This was held at Westminster Chapel March, 2008 Debate – William Lane Craig vs Christopher Hitchens – Does God Exist? Uploaded on Jan 27, 2011 April 4, 2009 – Craig […]

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Kyle Butt notes that Antony Flew left Atheism but fell short of making a profession of faith during his lifetime

April 9, 2014 – 1:59 am

_________________ Antony Flew – World’s Most Famous Atheist Accepts Existence of God Uploaded on Nov 28, 2008 Has Science Discovered God? A half-century ago, in 1955, Professor Antony Flew set the agenda for modern atheism with his Theology and Falsification, a paper presented in a debate with C.S. Lewis. This work became the most widely […]

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Gary Habermas explains the reasons for Antony Flew’s change of mind

April 8, 2014 – 1:42 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged A. J. Ayer, Albert Camus, Antony Flew, Bertrand Russell, george wald, J.L. Mackie, Jacques Derrida, jean paul sartre, Martin Heidegger, Michael Martin, paul kurtz, Richard Rorty | Edit | Comments (0)

The finest article on Antony Flew’s long path from Atheism to Theism!!

April 7, 2014 – 1:32 am

___________________ This is the finest article yet I have read that traces Antony Flew’s long path from atheism to theism. How Anthony Flew – Flew to God Among the world’s atheists there was hardly any with the intellectual stature of Anthony Flew. He was a contemporary with C.S. Lewis and has been a thorn in […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Tagged Antony Flew, Bertrand Russell,C.S.Lewis, Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, george wald, Katharine Tai, Lewis Wolpert,Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Terry Miethe, Victor Stenger | Edit | Comments (0)

Antony Flew incorrectly wrote that George Wald later abandoned atheism!!!

April 4, 2014 – 12:26 am

Making Sense of Faith and Science Uploaded on May 16, 2008 Dr. H. Fritz Schaefer confronts the assertion that one cannot believe in God and be a credible scientist. He explains that the theistic world view of Bacon, Kepler, Pascal, Boyle, Newton, Faraday and Maxwell was instrumental in the rise of modern science itself. Presented […]

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Antony Flew opened himself up to the possibility of accepting Christian teachings although never making a public profession of faith

April 3, 2014 – 12:19 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Tagged Antony Flew | Edit | Comments (0)

Part of the reason Antony Flew left atheism can be found in this Paul Davies’ quote “Science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview!”

April 2, 2014 – 10:20 am

Conversation with John Barrow Published on Jun 16, 2012 Templeton Prize 2006, Gifford Lectures 1988 British Academy, 1 June 2012 _______ Many Christians are involved in science and John D. Barrow is one of the leaders of science today. Here is his bio: John D Barrow John D. Barrow was born in London in […]

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Antony Flew, “I was particularly impressed with Gerry Schroeder’s point-by-point refutation of what I call the MONKEY THEOREM” or the “the possibility of life arising by chance using the analogy of a multitude of monkeys banging away on computer keyboards and eventually ending up writing a Shakespearean sonnet!”

April 2, 2014 – 7:11 am

____________ Discussion (1 of 3): Antony Flew, N.T. Wright, and Gary Habermas Uploaded on Sep 22, 2010 A discussion with Antony Flew, N.T. Wright, and Gary Habermas. This was held at Westminster Chapel March, 2008 ___________ __________ Antony Flew, “I was particularly impressed with Gerry Schroeder’s point-by-point refutation of what I call the MONKEY […]

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By Everette Hatcher III | Tagged Dan Guinn, Heinrich Himmler | Comments (0)

Answering my Humanist Friends concerning the Problem of Evil (Plus Atheist Ricky Gervais says he embraces the Golden Rule)

April 14, 2014 – 2:05 pm

—

Josh Wilson – Before The Morning (Official Music Video)

One of my favorite songs is called “Before the Morning” and it is by the Christian singer Josh Wilson. The lyrics start out: “Why do you have to feel the things that hurt you? If there’s a God who loves you where is He now?” Over the years I have corresponded with several atheists and many times they confront me on this very issue such as this letter did from Dr. Brian Charlesworth, Dept of Ecology and Evolution, University of Chicago in letter dated May 10, 1994:

Thank you for your various communications. I am afraid that I formed the view many years ago that there is no foundation for any belief in a benevolent creator of the world. For me, there is too much suffering in the world to be compatible with the existence of such a being.

Let me make three points concerning the problem of evil and suffering. First, the problem of evil and suffering hit this world in a big way because of Adam and what happened in Genesis Chapter 3. Second, if there is no God then there is no way to distinguish good from evil and there will be no ultimate punishment for Hitler and Josef Mengele. Third. Christ came and suffered and will destroy all evil from this world eventually forever.

Recently I went to see the movie GOD’S NOT DEAD in a local theater and that prompted me to read the book of the same name by Rice Broocks. In the movie the problem of evil and suffering is discussed just like it is in the book and would love to interact further with anyone who would like to see the film is a big hit in theaters this year. On page 5 on the book you will find these words:

Atheists claim that the universe isn’t what you would expect

if a supernatural God existed. All this death and suffering, they say,

are plain evidence that a loving, intelligent God could not be behind

it all. The truth is that God has created a world where free moral

agents are able to have real choices to do good or evil. If God had

created a world without that fundamental choice and option to do

evil, then we wouldn’t be having this discussion. God made a world

where choices are real and humanity is affected by the choices of

other humans. Drunk drivers kill innocent people. Some murder

and steal from their fellow men. Though God gave clear com-

mandments to humanity, we have for the most part ignored these

directives. The mess that results is not God’s fault. It’s ours.

We are called to follow God and love Him with all our hearts

and minds. This means we have to think and investigate. Truth

is another word for reality. When something is true it’s true

everywhere. The multiplication tables are just as true in China

as they are in America. Gravity works in Africa the way it does

in Asia. The fact that there are moral truths that are true every-

where points to a transcendent morality that we did not invent

and from which we cannot escape (C.S.Lewis, MERE CHRISTIANITY,[1952:

New York: Harper Collins, 2001], p. 35).

As Creator, God has placed not only natural laws in the earth

but also spiritual laws. For instance, lying is wrong everywhere.

So is stealing. Cruelty to children is wrong regardless of what

culture you’re in or country you’re from. When these laws are

broken, people are broken. Not only does violating these spiritual

laws separate us from God, but it causes pain in our lives and

in the lives of those around us. The big question becomes, what

can be done about our condition? When we break these spiritual

laws, whom can we call for help? How can we be reconciled to

God as well as break free from this cycle of pain and dysfunction?

Francis Schaeffer in his fine book about modern man ESCAPE FROM REASON states,

“the True Christian position is that, in space and time and history, there was an unprogrammed man who made a choice, and actually rebelled against God…without Christianity’s answer that God made a significant man in a significant history with evil being the result of Satan’s and then man’s historic space-time revolt, there is no answer but to accept Baudelaire’s answer [‘If there is a God, He is the devil’] with tears. Once the historic Christian answer is put away, all we can do is to leap upstairs and say that against all reason God is good.”(pg. 81)

Someone I knew in 1985 grew up in Germany and was part of the Hitler Youth Program, Was he wrong in his beliefs?

On what basis does the atheist have to say “Hitler was wrong!!!”

Early in his career Hitler was popular and many of the German people bought into his anti-semetic views. Does the atheist have an intellectual basis to condemn Hitler’s actions?

____________________________________

My friend who grew up in Germany believed until his dying day that Hitler was right. I had a basis for knowing that Hitler was wrong and here it is below.

It is my view that according the Bible all men are created by God and are valuable. However, the atheist has no basis for coming to this same conclusion. Francis Schaeffer put it this way:

We cannot deal with people like human beings, we cannot deal with them on the high level of true humanity, unless we really know their origin—who they are. God tells man who he is. God tells us that He created man in His image. So man is some- thing wonderful.

In 1972 Schaeffer wrote the book “He is There and He is Not Silent.” Here is the statement that sums up that book:

One of philosophy’s biggest problems is that anything exists at all and has the form that it does. Another is that man exists as a personal being and makes true choices and has moral responsibility. The Bible gives sufficient answers to these problems. In fact, the only sufficient answer is that the infinite-personal triune God is there and He is not silent. He has spoken to man in the Bible.

In the movie CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS the basic question Woody Allen is presenting to his own agnostic humanistic worldview is: If you really believe there is no God there to punish you in an afterlife, then why not murder if you can get away with it? The secular humanist worldview that modern man has adopted does not work in the real world that God has created. God “has planted eternity in the human heart…” (Ecclesiastes 3:11). This is a direct result of our God-given conscience. The apostle Paul said it best in Romans 1:19, “For that which is known about God is evident to them and made plain in their inner consciousness, because God has shown it to them” (Amplified Version).

Humanist Abigail Ann Martin responded, “Neither am I an advocate of Hitler; however, by whose criteria is he evil?” (The Humanist, September/October 1997, p. 2.). Humanists don’t really have an intellectual basis for saying that Hitler was wrong, but their God-given conscience tells them that they are wrong on this issue.

Here is fine film by Francis Schaeffer and Dr. C. Everett Koop that makes the case for human dignity.

Francis Schaeffer “BASIS FOR HUMAN DIGNITY” Whatever…HTTHR

Also here is the link for another fine article on this same issue by Chuck Colson.

Crimes? What Crimes?

The Grand ‘Sez Who’

By Chuck Colson|Published Date: October 29, 1996

Let us take a close look at how you are going to come up with morality as an atheist. When you think about it there is no way around the final conclusion that it is just your opinion against mine concerning morality. There is no final answers. However, if God does exist and he has imparted final answers to us then everything changes.

Take a look at a portion of this paper by Greg Koukl. In this article he points out that atheists don’t even have a basis for saying that Hitler was wrong:

What doesn’t make sense is to look at the existence of evil and question the existence of God. The reason is that atheism turns out being a self-defeating philosophic solution to this problem of evil. Think of what evil is for a minute when we make this kind of objection. Evil is a value judgment that must be measured against a morally perfect standard in order to be meaningful. In other words, something is evil in that it departs from a perfect standard of good. C.S. Lewis made the point, “My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call something crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line.”[ 1 ] He also goes on to point out that a portrait is a good or a bad likeness depending on how it compares with the “perfect” original. So to talk about evil, which is a departure from good, actually presumes something that exists that is absolutely good. If there is no God there’s no perfect standard, no absolute right or wrong, and therefore no departure from that standard. So if there is no God, there can’t be any evil, only personal likes and dislikes–what I prefer morally and what I don’t prefer morally.

This is the big problem with moral relativism as a moral point of view when talking about the problem of evil. If morality is ultimately a matter of personal taste–that’s what most people hold nowadays–then it’s just your opinion what’s good or bad, but it might not be my opinion. Everybody has their own view of morality and if it’s just a matter of personal taste–like preferring steak over broccoli or Brussels sprouts–the objection against the existence of God based on evil actually vanishes because the objection depends on the fact that some things are intrinsically evil–that evil isn’t just a matter of my personal taste, my personal definition. But that evil has absolute existence and the problem for most people today is that there is no thing that is absolutely wrong. Premarital sex? If it’s right for you. Abortion? It’s an individual choice. Killing? It depends on the circumstances. Stealing? Not if it’s from a corporation.

The fact is that most people are drowning in a sea of moral relativism. If everything is allowed then nothing is disallowed. Then nothing is wrong. Then nothing is ultimately evil. What I’m saying is that if moral relativism is true, which it seems like most people seem to believe–even those that object against evil in the world, then the talk of objective evil as a philosophical problem is nonsense. To put it another way, if there is no God, then morals are all relative. And if moral relativism is true, then something like true moral evil can’t exist because evil becomes a relative thing.

An excellent illustration of this point comes from the movie The Quarrel . In this movie, a rabbi and a Jewish secularist meet again after the Second World War after they had been separated. They had gotten into a quarrel as young men, separated on bad terms, and then had their village and their family and everything destroyed through the Second World War, both thinking the other was dead. They meet serendipitously in Toronto, Canada in a park and renew their friendship and renew their old quarrel.

Rabbi Hersch says to the secularist Jew Chiam, “If a person does not have the Almighty to turn to, if there’s nothing in the universe that’s higher than human beings, then what’s morality? Well, it’s a matter of opinion. I like milk; you like meat. Hitler likes to kill people; I like to save them. Who’s to say which is better? Do you begin to see the horror of this? If there is no Master of the universe then who’s to say that Hitler did anything wrong? If there is no God then the people that murdered your wife and kids did nothing wrong.”

That is a very, very compelling point coming from the rabbi. In other words, to argue against the existence of God based on the existence of evil forces us into saying something like this: Evil exists, therefore there is no God. If there is no God then good and evil are relative and not absolute, so true evil doesn’t exist, contradicting the first point. Simply put, there cannot be a world in which it makes any sense to say that evil is real and at the same time say that God doesn’t exist. If there is no God then nothing is ultimately bad, deplorable, tragic or worthy of blame. The converse, by the way, is also true. This is the other hard part about this, it cuts both ways. Nothing is ultimately good, honorable, noble or worthy of praise. Everything is ultimately lost in a twilight zone of moral nothingness. To paraphrase the late Dr. Francis Schaeffer, the person who argues against the existence of God based on the existence of evil in the world has both feet firmly planted in mid-air.

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Ricky Gervais in a You Tube clip from the show Piers Morgan Tonight on 1-20-2011 said that he embraced the golden rule because it made sense to him to be good to others so they would be good to you. However, how would that work if there is no ultimate lawmaker that also is our final judge? Rabbi Hersch’s argument to the secularist Jew Chiam seems to point out that without God in the picture it really does come to : “If a person does not have the Almighty to turn to, if there’s nothing in the universe that’s higher than human beings, then what’s morality? Well, it’s a matter of opinion. I like milk; you like meat. Hitler likes to kill people; I like to save them. Who’s to say which is better?”

Francis Schaeffer

Francis Schaeffer pictured above.

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Rusty Wright of Probe Ministries wrote the article below:

Many crime victims feel forsaken by God. So do many divorced people, war prisoners, and starving refugees. But this young man’s cry of desperation carried added significance because of its historical allusion.

The words had appeared about a thousand years earlier in a song written by a king. The details of the song are remarkably similar to the suffering the young man endured. It said, “All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads …. They have pierced my hands and my feet…. They divide my garments among them and cast lots for my clothing.”{2}

Historians record precisely this behavior during the young man’s execution.{3} It was as if a divine drama were unfolding as the man slipped into death.

Researchers have uncovered more than 300 predictions or prophesies literally fulfilled in the life and death of this unique individual. Many of these statements written hundreds of years before his birth-were beyond his human control. One correctly foretold the place of his birth. {4} Another said he would be born of a virgin. {5} He would be preceded by a messenger who would prepare the way for his work, {6} He would enter the capital city as a king but riding on a donkeys back {7} He would be betrayed for thirty pieces of Silver, {8} pierced, {9} executed among thieves, {10} and yet, though wounded, {11} he would suffer no broken bones.{12}

Peter Stoner, a California mathematics professor, calculated the chance probability of just eight of these 300 prophecies coming true in one person. Using conservative estimates, Stoner concluded that the probability is 1 in 10 to the 17th power that those eight could be fulfilled by a fluke.

He says 10¹⁷silver dollars would cover the state of Texas two feet deep. Mark one coin with red fingernail polish. Stir the whole batch thoroughly. What chance would a blindfolded person have of picking the marked coin on the first try? One in 10¹⁷, the same chance that just eight of the 300 prophecies “just happened” to come true in this man, Jesus. {13}

In his dying cry from the cross Jesus reminded His hearers that His life and death precisely fulfilled God’s previously stated plan. According to the biblical perspective, at the moment of death Jesus experienced the equivalent of eternal separation from God in our place so that we might be forgiven and find new life.

He took the penalty due for all the crime, injustice, evil, sin, and shortcomings of the world-including yours and mine.

Though sinless Himself, He likely felt guilty and abandoned. Then-again in fulfillment of prophecy{14} and contrary to natural law-He came back to life. As somewhat of a skeptic I investigated the evidence for Christ’s resurrection and found it to be one of the best-attested facts in history. {15} To the seeker Jesus Christ offers true inner peace, forgiveness, purpose, and strength for contented living.

SO WHAT?

“OK, great,” you might say, “but what hope does this give the crime or divorce victim, the hungry and bleeding refugee, the citizen paralyzed by a world gone bad?” Will Jesus prevent every crime, reconcile every troubled marriage, restore every refugee, stop every war? No. God has given us free will. Suffering–even unjust suffering–is a necessary consequence of sin.

Sometimes God does intervene to change circumstances. (I’m glad my assailant became nervous and left.) Other times God gives those who believe in Him strength to endure and confidence that He will see them through. In the process, believers mature.

Most significantly we can hope in what He has told us about the future. Seeing how God has fulfilled prophecies in the past gives us confidence to believe those not yet fulfilled. Jesus promises eternal life to all who trust Him for it: “Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned; he has crossed over from death to life.”{16}

He promised He would return to rescue people from this dying planet.{17}

He will judge all evil.{18}

Finally justice will prevail. Those who have chosen to place their faith in Him will know true joy: “He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there shall no longer be any death; there shall no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain.”{19}

Does God intend that we ignore temporal evil and mentally float off into unrealistic ethereal bliss? Nor at all. God is in the business of working through people to turn hearts to Him, resolve conflicts, make peace. After my assailant went to prison, I felt motivated to tell him that I forgave him because of Christ. He apologized, saying he, too, has now come to believe in Jesus.

But through every trial, every injustice you suffer, you can know that God is your friend and that one day He will set things right. You can know that He is still on the throne of the universe and that He cares for you. You can know this because His Son was born (Christmas is, of course, a celebration of His birth), lived, died, and came back to life in fulfillment of prophecy. Because of Jesus, if you personally receive His free gift of forgiveness, you can have hope!

Will you trust Him?

Notes

1. Matthew 27:46.

2. Psalm 22.

3. Matthew 27:35-44; John 20:25.

4. Micah 5:2; Matthew 2:1.

5. Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 1:18, 24-25; Luke 1:26-35.

6. Malachi 3:1; Isaiah 40:3; Matthew 3:1-2.

7. Zechariah 9:9; John 12:15; Matthew 21: 1-9.

8. Zechariah 11:12; Matthew 26:15.

9. Zechariah 12:10; John 19:34, 37.

10. Isaiah 53:12.

11. Matthew 27:38; Isaiah 53:5; Zechariah 13:6; Matthew 27:26.

12. Psalm 34:20; John 19:33, 36.

13. Peter Stoner, Science Speaks, pp. 99-112.

14. Psalm 6:10; Acts 2:31-32.

15. Josh McDowell, Evidence That Demands a Verdict, pp. 185-273.

16. John 5:24.

17. 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18.

18. Revelation 20:10-15.

19. Revelation 21:4 NAS.

About the Author

Rusty Wright, former associate speaker and writer with Probe Ministries, is an international lecturer, award-winning author, and journalist who has spoken on six continents. He holds Bachelor of Science (psychology) and Master of Theology degrees from Duke and Oxford universities, respectively. http://www.rustywright.com/

The Bible and Archaeology (1/5)

The Bible and Archaeology (2/5)

God Is A Luxury I Can’t Afford – From Crimes And Misdemeanors

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Richard Dawkins, Alister McGrath, D. James Kennedy. Francis Schaeffer and Ravi Zacharias discuss the problem of evil!!!

March 20, 2014 – 4:26 pm

______ 115. Filosofia: Richard Dawkins Vs Alister McGrath Published on Dec 21, 2012 Neste vídeo: Richard Dawkins Vs Alister McGrath Curta nossa página no facebook: https://www.facebook.com/multiversosp… ____________________ At the 40 minute mark Richard Dawkins and Alister McGrath discuss Deena Burnett’s assertion that her husband Tom was an instrument carrying out God’s will in stopping the plane […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Francis Schaeffer | Tagged Alister McGrath, D. James Kennedy. Francis Schaeffer, ravi zacharias, Richard Dawkins | Edit | Comments (0)

Evil, Evangelism and Ecclesiastes by Melvin Tinker

October 31, 2013 – 1:52 am

I have written on the Book of Ecclesiastes and the subject of the meaning of our lives on several occasions on this blog. In this series on Ecclesiastes I hope to show how secular humanist man can not hope to find a lasting meaning to his life in a closed system without bringing God back […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Taking on Ark Times Bloggers on the “Absurdity of Life without God!!” Part 14 ( You can’t identify evil without revealed truth from the infinite personal God)

October 2, 2013 – 1:09 am

The Fruits of Atheism (Part 4) Uploaded on Apr 10, 2009 Examining the Creation/Evolution Controversy in Light of Reason and Revelation Evolutionary Hoaxes (Part 1/4) Uploaded on Apr 10, 2009 Examining the Creation/Evolution Controversy in Light of Reason and Revelation ___________________ Evolutionary Hoaxes (Part 2/4) Uploaded on Apr 10, 2009 Examining the Creation/Evolution Controversy in Light of Reason […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Arkansas Times, Atheists Confronted, Biblical Archaeology,Francis Schaeffer | Edit | Comments (0)

Hitler’s last few hours before entering hell (never before released photos)

April 30, 2012 – 4:41 pm

Below are several never released before pictures of Hitler’s bunker. These are the sights that Hitler took in last before entering hell. How do I know he entered hell? Read below and you will see why I can say that with confidence. LIFE: Hitler’s Bunker On Monday, April 30, on the anniversary of the day […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Tagged God, Hell, Hitler, judgment,punishment | Edit | Comments (0)

Former atheist Antony Flew pointed out that natural selection can’t explain the origin of first life and in every other case, information necessarily points to an intelligent source!

April 14, 2014 – 1:26 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Tagged Antony Flew | Edit | Comments (0)

DARWINISM RECONSIDERED article from 2005 quotes Antony Flew, Richard Dawkins, Jonathan Miller, and Phillip Johnson

April 11, 2014 – 1:10 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Antony Flew interviewed by Benjamin Wiker and the two reasons Flew left atheism!!!

April 10, 2014 – 1:57 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Tagged Antony Flew, Ben Wiker | Edit |Comments (0)

Kyle Butt notes that Antony Flew left Atheism but fell short of making a profession of faith during his lifetime

April 9, 2014 – 1:59 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Tagged Antony Flew, Kyle Butt, Roy Varghese, Warren-Flew Debate | Edit | Comments (0)

Antony Flew opened himself up to the possibility of accepting Christian teachings although never making a public profession of faith

April 3, 2014 – 12:19 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Tagged Antony Flew | Edit | Comments (0)

Part of the reason Antony Flew left atheism can be found in this Paul Davies’ quote “Science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview!”

April 2, 2014 – 10:20 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Tagged Antony Flew, John Barrow, Paul Davies | Edit | Comments (0)

Antony Flew, “I was particularly impressed with Gerry Schroeder’s point-by-point refutation of what I call the MONKEY THEOREM” or the “the possibility of life arising by chance using the analogy of a multitude of monkeys banging away on computer keyboards and eventually ending up writing a Shakespearean sonnet!”

April 2, 2014 – 7:11 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Tagged Antony Flew, Gerry Schroeder,Richard Dawkins | Edit | Comments (0)

By Everette Hatcher III | Also posted in Atheists Confronted, Francis Schaeffer, Woody Allen | Tagged Brian Charlesworth, C.S.Lewis, chuck colson, crimes and misdemeanors, Dr. C. Everett Koop, Ecclesiastes, Gloria Leitner, Greg Koukl, He is There and He is Not Silen, Hitler, Hitler Youth Program, Humanist Abigail Ann Marti, josh wilson, ravi zacharias, Ricky Gervais, Rusty Wright, The Humanist | Comments (0)

Former atheist Antony Flew pointed out that natural selection can’t explain the origin of first life and in every other case, information necessarily points to an intelligent source!

April 14, 2014 – 1:26 am

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Antony Flew and his conversion to theism

Uploaded on Aug 12, 2011

Antony Flew, a well known spokesperson for atheism for several decades, changed his mind and turned from atheism to Deism. Professor Flew, who was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading, has given clear reasons why he made that transition. These reasons have been presented briefly in this compilation.

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The Bible and Science (Part 01)

Discussion (1 of 3): Antony Flew, N.T. Wright, and Gary Habermas

Uploaded on Sep 22, 2010

A discussion with Antony Flew, N.T. Wright, and Gary Habermas. This was held at Westminster Chapel March, 2008

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Moral Implications of Atheism – Kyle Butt

Quotes William Provine, Dan Barker, Charles Darwin,Peter Singer, James Rachels, Eric R. Pianka, Richard Dawkins, and Sam Harris

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Is There a God? William Lane Craig vs Victor J. Stenger (University of Hawaii, 2003)

Uploaded on Jul 31, 2011

http://reasonablefaith.org – University of Hawaii, 2003 – Is There a God? William Lane Craig vs Victor J. Stenger. A debate before a packed house at the University of Hawaii with Professor of Physics Victor Stenger in which Craig and Stenger square off on such issues as the Big Bang and the beginning of time, the odds of the fine-tuning of the constants and quantities requisite for life, evil and moral values, religious experience, and many more. This is William Lane Craig’s first debate with atheist Victor Stenger.

Craig’s second debate with Stenger: http://youtu.be/EjOs62PJciI

William Lane Craig and his arguments and evidence for God:

Contingency Argument for God (the Leibnizian Argument):

Kalam Cosmological Argument for God:

Teleological Argument for God:

Ontological Argument for God:

Moral Argument for God:

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?p=PLE…

Belief in God as Properly Basic:

Links to videos of William Lane Craig:

http://drcraigvideos.blogspot.com

We welcome your comments in the Reasonable Faith forums:
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/forums/

Follow Reasonable Faith On Twitter: http://twitter.com/rfupdates

Add Reasonable Faith On Facebook:http://www.facebook.com/reasonablefai…

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Former atheist Antony Flew pointed out that natural selection can’t explain the origin of first life. Ultimately, a vast amount of information is behind life, and in every other case, information necessarily points to an intelligent source.

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Former leading atheist argues for the existence of God

A review of There is a God: How The World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind by Antony Flew with Roy Varghese
Harper Collins, New York, 2007

reviewed by Lita Cosner

There is a God

Skeptics often cite ‘testimonies’ of former professing Christians who ‘de-converted’ (apostatized) to atheism to show that Christianity is inherently unreasonable; sure, f course, they often ignore or dismiss the conversion stories of former atheists. Antony Flew’s rejection of atheism is a nightmare for skeptics, because the most influential atheistic philosopher of the twentieth century is rather harder to dismiss out-of-hand. Flew documents this intellectual process in There is a God.

From Christianity to atheism

Flew begins the story of his rejection of atheism by explaining how he became an atheist in the first place. The son of a Methodist minister, Flew went to school as ‘a committed and conscientious, if unenthusiastic, Christian’ (p. 10), but during his studies began to question his faith. The problem of evil caused Flew to question the possibility of an omnipotent God. By the time he was 15, he considered himself an atheist (p. 15), although Flew admits that he ‘reached the conclusion about the nonexistence of God much too quickly, much too easily, and for what later seemed to me the wrong reasons’ (pp. 10–11).

Influential atheist works

Photo from
<www. researchintelligentdesign.org>

Anthony Flew The 20th century’s most influential atheist thinker, Antony Flew, announced in 2004 that he accepted the existence of a God.

Flew’s rejection of atheism would not be such a problem for atheists if he hadn’t been the foremost atheist thinker of the 20th century. In Oxford, Flew was part of the Socratic club, a forum for debate between atheists and Christians, of which C.S. Lewis was the president for over a decade. There he presented ‘Theology and Falsification’, a paper which argued that many theological statements have so many qualifications attached that they are essentially empty (pp. 43–44). However, he says, ‘I was not saying that statements of religious belief were meaningless. I simply challenged religious believers to explain how their statements are to be understood, especially in the light of conflicting data’ (p. 45). This 1950 paper sparked many responses, some decades after the paper was presented (p. 47).

In 1961, Flew published his next atheist work; God and Philosophy was Flew’s attempt to examine the basis for Christian theism. In a systematic argument for atheism, he contended that the ‘the design, cosmological, and moral arguments for God’s existence are invalid’ (p. 49). He argued that the concept of God must be sufficiently defined before God’s existence can be debated. He now considers this book to be ‘a historical relic’ (p. 52), and later in his current book advocates the design and cosmological arguments as valid evidence of God’s existence.

In 1971, Flew published The Presumption of Atheism. In his final work dealing with atheism, he argued that as the inherently more rational position, atheism should be presumed at the outset of any debate regarding God’s existence, and the burden of proof should be on the theist (p. 53). He notes that the ‘headiest challenge’ to this argument came from Christian logician Alvin Plantinga, who argued that the belief in God is ‘properly basic’ for believers (p. 55). He clarifies that ‘the presumption of atheism is, at best, a methodological starting point, not an ontological conclusion’, and that the presumption of atheism could be accepted by theists who have adequate grounds for believing in God (p. 56).

Indeed, atheism itself has a number of propositions that have to be accepted by faith, e.g. that something (the universe) came from nothing, non-living matter evolved into living cells by stochastic chemistry, complex specified information arose without intelligence, morality arose by natural selection, etc.

From atheism to theism

What I think the DNA material has done is that it has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinarily diverse elements to work together.—Antony Flew

Flew concentrated on other philosophical areas for the next several decades, only revisiting atheistic topics to debate people based on his previous works. He took part in cordial debates with theists, which included one in 1985 with philosopher and theologian Dr Gary Habermas on the most important reported deed of all, the proposition that Jesus Christ conquered death itself.¹ This debate was held in Dallas in front of a crowd of three thousand people. It was judged by two panels of experts from leading American universities: one panel comprised five philosophers who were asked to judge the content of the debate, and the other comprised five professional debate judges who were asked to judge the quality of the arguments.

Four of the five on the philosophers panel voted that Habermas had won, i.e. the case he made for the Resurrection was stronger than Flew’s attempts to refute it, and one scored it a draw. The panel of professional debate judges voted three to two to Habermas.

At the most recent debate in 2004, at New York University, he declared that he ‘now accepted the existence of a God’ (p. 74). In that debate, he said that he believed that the origin of life points to a creative Intelligence,

‘almost entirely because of the DNA investigations. What I think the DNA material has done is that it has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinarily diverse elements to work together. It’s the enormous complexity of the number of elements and the enormous subtlety of the ways they work together. The meeting of these two parts at the right time by chance is simply minute. It is all a matter of the enormous complexity by which the results were achieved, which looked to me like the work of intelligence’ (p. 75).

DNA The complexity of the genetic code led Flew to believe that the origin of life required a ‘creative intelligence’.

Flew was particularly impressed with a physicist’s refutation of the idea that monkeys at typewriters would eventually produce a Shakespearean sonnet. The likelihood of getting one Shakespearean sonnet by chance is one in 10⁶⁹⁰; to put this number in perspective, there are only 10⁸⁰ particles in the universe. Flew concludes:

‘If the theorem won’t work for a single sonnet, then of course it’s simply absurd to suggest that the more elaborate feat of the origin of life could have been achieved by chance’ (p. 78).

Flew was also critical of Dawkins’s ‘selfish gene’ idea, pointing out that ‘natural selection does not positively produce anything. It only eliminates, or tends to eliminate, whatever is not competitive’ (p. 78). He called Dawkins’s The Selfish Gene ‘a major exercise in popular mystification’, and argued that Dawkins made the critical mistake of overlooking the fact that most observable traits in organisms are the result of the coding of many genes (p. 79).

Fingerprints of a designer

Flew’s belief in God hinges on three aspects of nature: ‘The first is the fact that nature obeys laws. The second is the dimension of life … The third is the very existence of nature’ (p. 89).

The Laws of nature

Every scientist must assume that nature acts in certain predictable, measurable ways; this is what makes scientific discovery possible. Paul Davies argued that ‘science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview’ (p. 107). However, there is really no reason why nature should follow laws; the existence of such laws requires an explanation. Three questions must be answered: ‘Where do the laws of physics come from? Why is it that we have these laws instead of some other set? How is that we have a set of laws that drives featureless gases to life, consciousness, and intelligence?’ (p. 108). Flew argues along with many other classical and modern scientists that theism is the only serious answer.

When Flew was an atheist, he argued that the universe and its laws were themselves ultimate (p. 134). Every belief has some fundamental assumption; for theists, the existence of God is the fundamental assumption. Flew, however, took the universe and its most fundamental features as that assumption. The discovery that the universe was not infinite threw a wrench into this assumption; if the universe had begun to exist at some point in time, it was reasonable to assume something caused its beginning. Because it is more likely that God exists uncaused, rather than the universe, it is logical to argue for the existence of God from the existence of the universe (pp. 144–145).

The fine-tuning of the universe

Not only does our universe follow finely tuned physical laws, but laws which seem to be finely tuned to enable life to exist. The most common atheist answer is to assert that our universe is one of many others—the ‘multiverse’ speculation. It is interesting that atheists who refuse to believe in an unseen God, based supposedly on the lack of evidence for His existence, explain away the appearance of design by embracing the existence of an unknown number of other universes for which there is no evidence—or even any effect of their evidence. In any case, Flew argues that even if there were multiple universes, it would not solve the atheists’ dilemma; ‘multiverse or not, we still have to come to terms with the origin of the laws of nature. And the only viable explanation here is the divine Mind’ (p. 121).

The origin of life

Can the origins of a system of coded chemistry be explained in a way that makes no appeal whatever to the kinds of facts that we otherwise invoke to explain codes and languages, systems of communication, the impress of ordinary words on the world of matter?—Antony Flew

The existence of physical laws which allow life to survive is necessary, but not sufficient by itself, for the existence of life. The question of the origin of life became much more complex with the discovery of DNA, a molecule comprising ‘letters’ that code for the instructions to build the machinery of life. A real vicious circle is that the instructions to build decoding machinery are themselves encoded on the DNA. That life is governed by a complex code leads to the question:

‘Can the origins of a system of coded chemistry be explained in a way that makes no appeal whatever to the kinds of facts that we otherwise invoke to explain codes and languages, systems of communication, the impress of ordinary words on the world of matter?’ (p. 127).

He pointed out that natural selection can’t explain the origin of first life. Ultimately, a vast amount of information is behind life, and in every other case, information necessarily points to an intelligent source, so it is only reasonable that there be a Source behind this information as well.

Flew’s God

As an atheist, Flew struggled with the idea of an invisible, omnipresent Person, and how such a person could be identified (p. 148). However, Flew was making embodiment part of his definition of a person, which isn’t justified. Philosopher Thomas Tracy defined persons simply as agents that are capable of acting intentionally (pp. 149–150). Although human persons are embodied, embodiment is not a necessary component for personhood. Flew admits that ‘At the very least, the studies of Tracy and Leftow show that the idea of an omnipotent Spirit is not intrinsically incoherent if we see such a Spirit as outside space and time that uniquely executes its intentions in the spatio-temporal continuum’ (pp. 153–154).

Flew identifies his god as the god of Aristotle, with the attributes of ‘immutability, immateriality, omnipotence, omniscience, oneness or indivisibility, perfect goodness and necessary existence’ (p. 92). He is adamant that his conversion to theism does not represent a paradigm shift, because his paradigm remains simply to follow the argument where it leads (p. 89).

Is Flew’s god the God of Scripture?

Some of the attributes of the god that Flew acknowledges are also attributes of God, but Flew does not acknowledge the Trinity or Christ as the second Person of the Trinity, both of which are essential Christian doctrines. So although Flew’s deistic beliefs echo Christian belief in some areas, the god he accepts is not the same as the God of the Bible, although he professes to remain open to the evidence.

Flew never claims to be Christian; he is a self-identified deist who does not believe in an afterlife (p. 2). Nonetheless, he is charitable in his comments about the Christians he came in contact with, writing that his father, a Methodist minister, shared his ‘eagerness of mind’ even though their intellectual pursuits led them in different directions (p. 12). Flew concludes that he is ‘entirely open to learning more about the divine Reality, especially in the light of what we know about the history of nature’ and that ‘the question of whether the Divine has revealed itself in human history remains a valid topic of discussion. You cannot limit the possibilities of omnipotence except to produce the logically impossible’ (p. 157).

A critique of ‘The New Atheism’

The first of two appendices in There is a God is a critique of the ‘New Atheism’ by co-author Roy Varghese. Varghese argues that there are some phenomena that are only explainable in terms of the existence of God (p. 161). His view is that atheism is a result of a deliberate refusal to look at the evidence, which is readily available in our immediate experience (p. 163).

First, Varghese argues that something had to always exist, either God or the universe (p. 165). He maintains that the theist argument is superior because the atheist says that the eternal existence of the universe is inherently unexplainable, but theists argue that the eternal existence of God is not inexplicable, just incomprehensible for humans (p. 165). The atheist view also fails to explain why something exists rather than nothing, and why the something that exists obeys the laws of nature (p. 171).

Atheists have to deal with consciousness. Although certain areas of the brain are associated withconsciousness, they do notproduce consciousness—a certain area of a person’s brain may show activity when thinking about a certain idea, but a neurologist cannot tell from that person’s MRI what he is thinking about.

Second, Varghese contends that most of the ‘new atheists’ do not even address the origin of life. Only Dawkins attempts an explanation; he claims that ‘a chemical model need only predict that life will arise on one planet in a billion billion to give us a good and entirely satisfying explanation for the presence of life here’ (p. 173). Varghese criticizes this as ‘manifestly inadequate or worse’ (p. 172) and as ‘an audacious exercise in superstition’ (p. 173), and indeed not even such an inadequate model exists.

Third, atheists have to deal with consciousness. Although certain areas of the brain are associated withconsciousness, they do not produce consciousness—a certain area of a person’s brain may show activity when thinking about a certain idea, but a neurologist cannot tell from that person’s MRI what he is thinking about. ‘Consciousness is correlated with certain regions of the brain, but when the same systems of neurons are present in the brain stem there is no “production” of consciousness’ (p. 174). Fourth, ‘beyond consciousness, there is the phenomenon of thought, of understanding, seeing meaning’ (p. 176). ‘At the foundation of all of our thinking, communicating, and use of language is a miraculous power. It is the power of noting differences and similarities and of generalizing and universalizing—what the philosophers call concepts universals, and the like. It is natural to humans, unique, and simply mystifying’ (pp. 176–177). The brain plays a part in this process, but there is clearly a non-physical part to it, as well. Varghese argues that ‘they are the acts of a person who is inescapably both embodied and “ensouled”’ (p. 178). Fifth, the atheists have to deal with the emergence of the self, which he calls ‘the most obvious and unassailable and the most lethal for all forms of physicalism’ (p. 181).

Did God become incarnate?

I think that the Christian religion is the one religion that most clearly deserves to be honoured and respected whether or not its claim to be a divine revelation is true. There is nothing like the combination of a charismatic figure like Jesus and a first-class intellectual like St. Paul. … If you’re wanting Omnipotence to set up a religion, this is the one to beat.—Antony Flew

The second appendix contains a dialogue between Flew and New Testament scholar N.T. Wright on the subject of ‘The self-revelation of God in human history’. Flew begins with some very charitable remarks about Christianity, saying that ‘I think that the Christian religion is the one religion that most clearly deserves to be honoured and respected whether or not its claim to be a divine revelation is true. There is nothing like the combination of a charismatic figure like Jesus and a first-class intellectual like St. Paul. … If you’re wanting Omnipotence to set up a religion, this is the one to beat’ (pp. 185–186). However, he questions the reliability of the New Testament on the subject of the Resurrection, because the New Testament was written decades after the events they purport to describe, and the earliest of these, the Pauline letters, have little physical detail. Nevertheless, he acknowledges that ‘the claim concerning the resurrection is more impressive than by any by the religious competition’ (187).

Wright begins his rebuttal by showing that the evidence for Jesus’ historical existence makes Him one of ancient history’s most well-attested figures. He goes on to show that Jesus is depicted in the Gospels as acting in ways that are in accord with Jewish belief about God in the Second Temple period (188–92). He demonstrates that Christian beliefs about the resurrection differed radically from what pagans believed, and differed substantially from Second Temple Jewish belief about resurrection. Christian belief about the Resurrection is unanimous from the earliest traditions through the first four or five generations; Wright argues that for this to be the case, there had to be a historical Resurrection that would serve as the basis for this new belief. Wright contends that though the Gospels were written later than the Pauline letters, the accounts of the Resurrection seem to stem from an oral tradition going back much earlier. Flew is impressed with Wright’s argument, and re-states that ‘you cannot limit the possibilities of omnipotence except to produce the logically impossible. Everything else is open to omnipotence’ (213).

This of course underlies the importance of the Resurrection debate with Habermas cited earlier. Flew still has no good answers to the strong case for the Resurrection.

Controversy regarding authorship

In the wake of its release, some skeptics claimed that the ideas expressed in There is a God did not really reflect Flew’s position and that he was being used by evangelicals.² First, Flew’s position is only close to the evangelical position in that deism is closer to evangelical Christianity than atheism; if evangelicals were trying to use Flew, they certainly did not do a very good job, as his book ends with him still questioning the reliability of the New Testament, the existence of an afterlife, and other core Christian concepts. The skeptics suggested that Varghese was the true author of the book, and that Flew was becoming mentally unstable in his advanced age. Flew does suffer from nominal aphasia, a condition which makes it hard to remember names, but denied all the allegations of ghost-writing and affirmed that the book was in line with his theistic views entirely.³

Indeed, these accusations also make little sense given the interview that Flew gave to none other than his former debate opponent, Gary Habermas.⁴

Conclusion

Many atheists say that religion is inherently unreasonable, and that if someone comes to faith in any deity, it is only because of a religious experience that is best unverifiable and at worst a form of delusion. However, Flew’s deistic argument is useful in that he, using arguments completely on the natural level, makes a powerful argument for God’s existence.

‘I must stress that my discovery of the Divine has proceeded on a purely natural level, without any reference to supernatural phenomena. It has been an exercise in what has traditionally been called natural theology. It has had no connection with any of the revealed religions. Nor do I claim to have had any personal experience of God or any experience that may be called supernatural or miraculous. In short, my discovery of the Divine has been a pilgrimage of reason and not of faith’ (p. 93).

Readers looking for an apologetic for Christianity will be disappointed, but the book is a good read. The book is powerful evidence that one can come to a belief in theism purely from the evidence. It is also a lesson that design alone is not enough for saving faith; that needs special revelation, which is likewise backed up by credible historical evidence as Habermas and Wright showed.

Update: Antony Flew died on 8 April 2010, at the age of 87, according to the obituary in the Telegraph (UK, 13 April 2010).

References

Habermas, G.R. and Flew, A.G.N., Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? The Resurrection Debate, Miethe, T.L. (Ed.), Harper & Row, San Francisco, CA, 1987. Return to text.
For instance, Oppenheimer, M., ‘The Turning of an Atheist’, New York Times, 4 November 2007, <www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/magazine/04Flew-t.html>.Return to text.
See Varghese’s response at <blog.christianitytoday.com/ctliveblog/archives/2007/11/doubting_antony.html>. Return to text.
My Pilgrimage from Atheism to Theism: an exclusive interview with former British atheist Professor Antony Flew by Gary Habermas, Philosophia Christi, Winter

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Former Atheist Antony Flew noted that Evolutionists failed to show “Where did a living, self-reproducing organism come from in the first place?”

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Educated Scholars like Antony Flew can believe in God!!!

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Antony Flew rightly noted that Richard Dawkins’ “monkey theorem was a load of rubbish”

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Article from 2005 indicated Antony Flew abandoned atheism because of Law of Biogenesis!!!!

The Christian influence on society is real and that is one of the reasons Antony Flew left Atheism!!!

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Antony Flew, George Wald and David Noebel on the Origin of Life

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The Fine Tuning Argument for the Existence of God from Antony Flew!

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Mark Oppenheimer of Time Magazine claims Antony Flew was convinced by PSEUDOSCIENCE that God exists!!!

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A review of “There is a God” by Antony Flew March 31, 2012

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Review of Antony Flew Book: THERE IS A GOD Article by R.C. Sproul May 2008

April 14, 2014 – 12:27 am

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Francis Schaeffer | Tagged Antony Flew,R.C.Sproul | Edit | Comments (0)

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“Music Monday” Little Rock Native David Hodges co-wrote top ten hit song “Because of You” sung by Kelly Clarkson

Kelly Clarkson – Because Of You

From David Hodges website:

David Hodges is a Grammy award-winning writer/producer/artist hailing from Little Rock, AR.

As the former writer and keyboardist of the band Evanescence, he and his band mates took home Best New Artist as well as the Best Hard Rock Performance trophy for their hit “Bring Me To Life” in 2004. Evanescence’s debut album Fallen has sold over 15 million copies worldwide.

David went on to write and produce Kelly Clarkson’s biggest worldwide single to date, “Because Of You”, which appeared on Clarkson’s 11 million-selling album Breakaway and garnered him the 2007 BMI Song Of The Year honor. The song was covered by Reba McEntire as the first single off her Duets album, and quickly rose up the country charts in 2007 becoming McEntire’s 30th Top 2 country single.

Hodges also penned the single, “What About Now”, which appears on American Idol Chris Daughtry’s debut album Daughtry. The 4x platinum Daughtry to date is credited as the fastest selling debut rock album in Soundscan history. “What About Now” also happens to be the first single on Westlife’s album “Who We Are.” David also won a BMI Pop award for this song.

David wrote the first single “Crush” for American Idol’s David Archuleta, which had the highest chart debut of any single since January 2007. David has since written songs for & released by Carrie Underwood, Train, Christina Perri, Celine Dion, David Cook, Lauren Alaina, The Cab, & many others.

In less than 10 years, David Hodges has been nominated for 6 Grammys & 1 Golden Globe, has won 5 BMI pop awards & 1 BMI country award, has had at least one album in the Billboard 200 for the last 8 consecutive years, and has written on albums that have sold over 50 million copies worldwide.

Because of You (Kelly Clarkson song)

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“Because of You”

Single by Kelly Clarkson

from the album Breakaway

Released

August 16, 2005

Format

Recorded

2004
North Hollywood, California (NRG Recording Studios)

Genre

Length

3:44

Label

RCA

Writer(s)

Kelly Clarkson
David Hodges
Ben Moody

Producer

David Hodges
Ben Moody

Kelly Clarkson singles chronology

“Behind These Hazel Eyes”
(2005)

“Because of You”
(2005)

“Walk Away”
(2006)

“Because of You” is a song by American recording artist Kelly Clarkson for her second studio album Breakaway (2004). It was written by Clarkson along with its producers David Hodges and Ben Moody. It was released on August 16, 2005 by RCA Records, as the fourth single (third in Europe) from Breakaway. Clarkson originally wrote “Because of You” when she was 16 years old to cope with the emotional distress caused by her parents’ divorce. She wanted the song to be included on her debut studio album, Thankful (2003), but her record label thought that it was not suitable to be included in the album. She then polished the song with Hodges and Moody before successfully convincing her label to include it in Breakaway.

Lyrically, “Because of You” explores the pain of a deteriorating relationship. Critics noted that the lyrics are Clarkson’s ode to her father. The song begins with a piano-led melody and as it launches into the chorus, the sound of a roaring guitar becomes apparent. Critically, “Because of You” garnered positive reviews by music critics, who praised its expressive lyrics, creative arrangement and Clarkson’s vocal prowess. It became Clarkson’s most successful single around the world; in the United States, it peaked at number seven on the Billboard Hot 100 and sold over 1.5 million digital downloads. It was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Internationally, “Because of You” topped the charts in the Netherlands, Denmark and Switzerland as well as reaching the top ten in Australia, Austria, Canada, Germany, Belgium, Hungary, Ireland, and the United Kingdom.

The song’s accompanying music video was directed by Vadim Perelman. Clarkson wrote the treatment for the video herself in order to reflect the pain that the she felt due to her parents’ divorce. The video’s plot centers on Clarkson engaging in a heated argument with her husband in front of her child before realizing that she was repeating her parents’ mistake. It won in the category for Best Female Video at the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards. “Because of You” was performed live at numerous venues, including the My December Tour (2007) as well as the All I Ever Wanted Tour (2009). It was covered by several artists including Ronan Parke, who is a runner-up in the fifth series of Britain’s Got Talent. In 2007, the song was recorded by Reba McEntire as a duet with Clarkson, which was released as a lead single for McEntire’s album Reba: Duets.

Background and writing

“My biggest song worldwide is Because of You, and … you may as well grab a knife. That song really is the most depressing one I’ve ever written. I tried to get it on Thankful, and was laughed at and told I wasn’t a good writer. So then I tried to get it on Breakaway – and the label saw the results, people responding to it, and allowed it to become a single. Then took credit for its success, of course.”

—Clarkson on trying to get the track into her album, Thankful. ^[1]

“Because of You” was written by Clarkson, David Hodges and Ben Moody while the production was handled by Hodges and Moody.^[2] They also wrote and produced another track entitled “Addicted” that appeared in Clarkson’s album Breakaway (2004).^[3] Clarkson originally wrote “Because of You” when she was 16 years old as a means of coping with the emotional distress caused by the divorce of her parents.^[4]^[5] She wrote the lyrics of the song in less than 25 minutes.^[3]

In an interview with The Guardian, Clarkson said that she wanted to include the song in her first album, Thankful (2003), but she was laughed at.^[1] Then, she took the initiative to polish the song by sending a tape to Moody and worked with Hodges as her songwriting partner. Clarkson explained, “Hearing the Evanescence album, you can obviously tell that David and Ben have a real passion for music and that big kind of background. And I have a big voice and I like the music to match it, so it was a real dream team.”^[3]

According to Moody, he was very impressed with Clarkson and the song itself, saying “She had these ideas already in place for songs; all I really had to do was build music around them and develop them. It was quite easy.”^[2] Clarkson also admitted that “Because of You” is the most depressing song she has ever written.^[1] Despite the revelation, she told Entertainment Weekly in August 2011 that she wanted to be remembered for the song because she had to work hard to get it on Breakaway (2004) when everyone was against it. She added, “I think I’m most proud of that song – just getting it on an album because no one liked it until it hit no. 1 worldwide and everybody was on board.”^[6]

Composition

	“Because of You” (2004) Menu 0:00 “Because of You” is a piano ballad composed in E minor.
Problems playing this file? See media help.

“Because of You” is a piano ballad^[7] with a length of three minutes and thirty-nine seconds.^[8] It is set in common time and has a moderate tempo of 69 beats per minute. It is composed in the key of F minor, and then modulated to the key of G minor, with Clarkson’s vocal range spanning over two octaves from A_b3 to E_b5.^[9] Bill Lamb of About.com described the song as “a big pop ballad that expresses raw emotion.”^[10] Tony Heywood of MusicOMH noted that the song’s piano arrangement is reminiscent of Tori Amos.^[11] Lyrically, “Because of You” is a fiery ode to Clarkson’s father,^[12] which is a dark exploration of emotional pain from a damaging relationship.^[13] The song begins with Clarkson singing “oohs” over a somber piano which creates a “wintry tone.”^[14] As the song launches into the chorus, the roaring guitar is evident,^[15] and the lyrics, “Because of you I never stray too far from the sidewalk / Because of you I learned to play on the safe side so I don’t get hurt,” were deemed as “touching” by Dave Donelly of Sputnikmusic.^[12]

Critical reception

“Because of You” received universal critical acclaim. Film Laureate of Blogcritics considered “Because of You” and “Where Is Your Heart” as his two favorite songs from Breakaway, writing “[Clarkson] commands these two songs like a seasoned pro and directs herself in her songs the way Steven Spielberg said Barbra Streisand directs herself in her songs as if she’s directing an actor in a movie.”^[16] Dave Donnelly of Sputnikmusic compared the song to Evanescence‘s “My Immortal” (2003). He added that Clarkson managed to take the piano-driven song in a different direction with a “stormy, hard blues vocal… avoiding the typical raised-key final chorus cliché along the way”.^[12] On the other hand, Bill Lamb of About.com lambasted the lyrics of the song and considered it as a 16-year-old work rather than an accomplished pop songwriter.^[10] Christa L. Titus of Billboard lauded the song for its absence of schmaltz factor, “only a potent, pained, grown-up anthem of gross betrayal and loss.” She concluded her review, writing “it is time for Clarkson to return to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100; she has certainly become the most consistent hope for top 40 staple status.”^[17] Critics also lauded Clarkson’s vocal prowess in the song. Pam Avoledo of Blogcritics thought that vocally, the song is Clarkson’s “shining” moment.^[18] Tony Heywood of MusicOMH noted that in the song, Clarkson’s voice is “full of vulnerability, ache and wounded pride.”^[11] In May 15, 2007, the song was listed as one of the recipients of BMI Pop Awards.^[19] At the 24th ASCAP Pop Music Awards, the song was honoured with the Most Performed Songs award.^[20] On July 2008, BBC News reported that according to Performing Right Society, “Because of You” was the second most played song in the United Kingdom over the last five years, following Daniel Powter‘s “Bad Day (2005).”^[21] On March 5, 2013 Billboard ranked the song #7 in its list of Top 100 American Idol Hits of All Time.^[22]

Chart performance

“Because of You” entered the Billboard Hot 100 at number 99 on the week ending September 3, 2005.^[23] On November 19, 2005, the song peaked at number seven and became her sixth single to reach the top-ten.^[24]^[25] It also topped the Pop Songs chart on the week ending October 29, 2005.^[26] It became the seventh best selling single of the 2000s decade on the Pop Songs chart complied by Billboard.^[27] On January 31, 2008, “Because of You” was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA).^[28] As of October 2012, the song has sold 1,729,000 digital copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan.^[29] In Canada, “Because of You” debuted at number 60 on the Canadian Hot 100 on the week ending July 14, 2007.^[30] Two weeks later, the song jumped to a new peak at number 36 and stayed in the position for two weeks.^[31] It was certified gold by Music Canada on December 4, 2007 for shipments over 40,000 units.^[32] The single also appeared and peaked on the UK Singles Chart at number seven on the week ending December 4, 2005.^[33]

In Australia, the song debuted and peaked at number four on the issue dated December 5, 2005.^[34] It was certified gold by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) for shipments over 35,000 units.^[35] The song became the 58th best-selling single in Australia in 2006.^[36] In New Zealand, “Because of You” debuted on New Zealand Singles Chart at number 37 on the week ending December 5, 2005,^[37] and peaked at number 19 two weeks later.^[38] On the week ending March 20, 2006, “Because of You” debuted at number eight on the German Singles Chart.^[39] Three weeks later, it peaked at number four and stayed in the position for three consecutive weeks.^[39] The song was certified gold by The Federal Association of Music Industry for shipments over 150,000 copies.^[40] In Europe, “Because of You” received a commercial success. The song topped the charts in the Netherlands^[41] and Switzerland^[42] and reached the top five in Austria,^[43] Belgium (Flanders),^[44] Ireland^[45] and Norway.^[46]

Music video

Development

The accompanying music video for “Because of You” was directed by Vadim Perelman and was produced by Rhonda Vernet.^[47] Clarkson wrote the treatment for the video herself in order to reflect the pain that the she felt due to her parents’ divorce.^[48] Nevertheless, Clarkson also allowed Perelman to take control of the production of the video.^[49] According to Perelman, he wanted to create a disconnection to show “that this kind of dysfunctional family can exist anywhere.”^[50] In an interview with MTV News, Clarkson confessed that the video is sad, rationalizing, “It’s a sad song, so the video obviously has to follow that. But it ends really happy and everything and the family, my family, ends up breaking the cycle of my parents.”^[49] Since the music video deals specifically with her parents’ divorce, Clarkson had to seek for her parent’s permission. She explained,

“It’s very close to home [for me]. I OK’d it with my family and everything because they think it’s important, because we’re obviously very different now than we were when we were younger. And it’s important for people to see that raw kind of emotion that happens in life. It sucks sometimes, so it’s important to see that I think. And that’s what we’re portraying in the video.”^[49]

In the video, the younger version of Clarkson is played by Kennedy Nöel, the daughter of her musical director, Jason Halbert.^[51] The music video of “Because of You” premiered on October 3, 2005, on Total Request Live.^[50]

Synopsis

Clarkson and her younger self (Kennedy Nöel) in the music video of “Because of You.”

The video starts at the Clarkson’s household. There, she and her husband are engaged in a heated argument and he threatens to smash down a picture of the family at one point. Time freezes still and her husband becomes immobile; Clarkson, however, is immune to this. Looking around her house, she sees her younger self. Hand in hand, the younger and older versions of Clarkson relive her troubled childhood as various painful memories are seen, such as the younger Clarkson making a picture for her father, who tosses it into the sink, and Clarkson’s mother making an unappreciated dinner for her father as she puts the father’s dinner into the bin. These events drive her mother to the point of taking pills and crying in front of the younger Clarkson. The breaking point is finally seen when Clarkson’s parents have a physical fight and throw objects at each other. Soon after, Clarkson’s father packs his bags and leaves. The older Clarkson runs back in time to the present and instead of fighting with her husband, they make up. They then see that their daughter in the video had seen them fight, and they embrace her and each other. Throughout the music video, Clarkson is shown singing on the front porch, her mother’s bed and a room full of mirrors, reflecting an image of her younger self.^[49]

Reception and accolades

Elizabeth Black of VH1 ranked the music video at number four in her list of “Five Emotive Music Video Performances.” She reasoned, “Kelly Clarkson practically sobs her way through this hurt and angry expression of the pain that the narrator’s father has caused her through his absence and lack of love.”^[52] The music video won the category of Best Female Video at the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards.^[53]^[54] This marks the second time Clarkson has won the same category two years in a row; her first win in the category was at the 2005 MTV Video Music Awards for the music video of “Since U Been Gone.”^[55] The music video was also nominated for the category of Viewer’s Choice Award,^[56] but lost to Fall Out Boy‘s “Dance, Dance” (2005).^[57] At the 2006 MuchMusic Video Awards, the music video won the category of People’s Choice: Favourite International Artist.^[58] The video was also nominated at the 2006 MTV Australia Video Music Awards in the category of Best Pop Video,^[59] but lost to Ashlee Simpson‘s “Boyfriend” (2005).^[60] According to Jocelyn Vena of MTV, the video for “Because of You” was referenced in Taylor Swift‘s music video for “Mine” (2010), writing “When Swift’s character remembers the fights her parents used to have, her memories mirror Clarkson’s attempts to exorcise the demons of her past to find love in her future.”^[61]

Live performances

Clarkson performed “Because of You” at the 48th Grammy Awards which took place on February 8, 2006, at the Staples Center in Los Angeles, California. Donning a red dress and singing from beside a grand piano, her performance in that event garnered positive reviews from critics. Elysa Gardner of USA Today lauded Clarkson’s performance and ranked it as one of the three best performances, writing, “The pre-performance clip of a girlish-looking Clarkson emphasized how little Kelly has matured. The girl most likely to escape the American Idol stigma was in fine, creamy voice, and kept the Mariah-esque riffing to a minimum.”^[62] Robert Lloyd of Los Angeles Times considered Clarkson’s performance as one of the highlights in the event and described her performance as a “thin-skinned rendition […] in which her whole being seemed involved.”^[63] Yahoo! Music praised Clarkson’s rendition of the song, calling it “perfectly fine” despite the saying that it was “a little reminiscent of those many mediocre, superficial ballads trotted out on ‘Idol.'”^[64] On August 21, 2007, Clarkson performed “Because of You” and “Never Again” (2007) on the fifth season of Canadian Idol.^[65]

“Because of You” was performed at the My December Tour (2007). Clarkson’s performance of the song was accompanied only by Wurlitzer organ that earned her a prolonged ovation when she sent her voice soaring into the rafters.^[66] While touring at Beacon Theatre, New York City, Clarkson performed the song using only one keyboard, which was deemed by Donna Freydkin of USA Today as the most memorable moment of the event.^[67] She also performed the song using only a keyboard as an instrument during her tour at Massey Hall, Toronto.^[68] “Because of You” was also performed at the All I Ever Wanted Tour (2009). Clarkson’s performance of the song during the tour in the Hammerstein Ballroom, New York City, was given a positive review by Jim Cantiello of MTV. He explained that Clarkson’s powerful rendition “literally stopped the show […] for almost 30 seconds because the audience erupted in such wild applause.”^[69] Caryn Ganz of Rolling Stone noted that Clarkson sang the song to pay homage to Reba McEntire who was in the audience.^[70]

Track listing

CD Single^[71]

“Because of You” (album version) – 3:39
“Since U Been Gone” – 3:21
“Because of You” (Jason Nevins Radio Edit) – 3:58
“Because of You” – 3:39

Dance Vault Mixes^[72]

“Because of You” (Jason Nevins radio) – 3:40
“Because of You” (Jason Nevins Club Mix) – 6:24
“Because of You” (Jason Nevins Club With Intro Breakdown) – 6:22
“Because of You” (Jason Nevins Dub) – 7:53
“Because of You” (Jason Nevins Club Instrumental) – 6:24
“Because of You” (Jason Nevins Radio Instrumental) – 3:58
“Because of You” (Jason Nevins Remix – Acoustic Version without Strings) – 3:51
“Because of You” (Jason Nevins Acoustic) – 3:50
“Because of You” (Jason Nevins Acapella) – 3:54

Remixes CD Single^[73]

“Because of You” (Bermudez & Griffin Radio Mix) – 4:04
“Because of You” (Bermudez & Griffin Club Mix) – 7:35
“Because of You” (Bermudez & Griffin Ultimix) – 5:23
“Because of You” (Bermudez & Griffin Tribe-a-Pella) – 5:24
“Because of You” (Bermudez & Griffin Club Mix Instrumental) – 7:35
“Because of You” (Bermudez & Griffin Ultimix Instrumental) – 5:23
“Because of You” (Bermudez & Griffin Bonus Beats) – 3:36
“Because of You” (Bermudez & Griffin Radio Mix Instrumental) – 4:01
“Because of You” – 3:40

Credits and personnel

Recording

Recorded by Dan Certa at NRG Recording Studios, North Hollywood, California

Personnel

Kelly Clarkson – lead and background vocals
Ben Moody – producer, guitar
David Campbell – string arrangement
David Hodges – producer, piano, string arrangement
Marty O’Brien – Bass

John Hanes – additional pro-tools engineer
Mark Colbert – drums
Sergio Chavez – assistant engineer
Serban Ghenea – mixing
Tim Roberts – mixing assistant

Source:^[74]

Charts and certifications

Weekly charts

Chart (2005–06)	Peak position
Australia (ARIA)^[75]	4
Austria (Ö3 Austria Top 40)^[76]	3
Belgium (Ultratop 50 Flanders)^[77]	5
Belgium (Ultratop 50 Wallonia)^[78]	16
Canada (Canadian Hot 100)^[79]	2
Czech Republic (IFPI)^[80]	13
Denmark Airplay (Tracklisten)^[81]	1
European Hot 100 Singles^[82]	1
France (SNEP)^[83]	13
Germany (Media Control AG)^[84]	4
Hungary (Rádiós Top 40)^[85]	2
Ireland (IRMA)^[86]	5
Italy (FIMI)^[87]	92
Netherlands (Dutch Top 40)^[88]	1
Netherlands (Mega Single Top 100)^[89]	1
New Zealand (RIANZ)^[90]	19
Norway (VG-lista)^[91]	5
Slovakia (IFPI)^[92]	75
Sweden (Sverigetopplistan)^[93]	30
Switzerland (Schweizer Hitparade)^[94]	1
UK Singles (Official Charts Company)^[95]	7
US Billboard Hot 100^[96]	7
US Pop Songs (Billboard)^[97]	1
US Adult Pop Songs (Billboard)^[98]	2
US Adult Contemporary (Billboard)^[99]	3
US Hot Dance Club Songs (Billboard)^[100]	24
US Latin Pop Songs (Billboard)^[101]	30
Chart (2012)	Peak position
South Korea International Singles (Gaon)^[102]	92

Certifications

Region	Certification	Sales/shipments
Australia (ARIA)^[35]	Gold	35,000^{^}
Brazil (ABPD)^[103]	Platinum	100,000^*
Denmark (IFPI Denmark)^[104]	Gold	4,000^{^}
Canada (Music Canada)^[32]	Gold	40,000^{^}
Germany (BVMI)^[40]	Gold	150,000^{^}
Norway (IFPI Norway)^[105]	2× Platinum	20,000^*
United States (RIAA)^[106]	Platinum+Gold (MT)	1,500,000^{^}
^{^}shipments figures based on certification alone

Year-end charts

Chart (2006)	Position
Australian Singles Chart^[107]	58
Austrian Singles Chart^[108]	19
Belgian Singles Chart (Flanders)^[109]	48
Belgian Singles Chart (Wallonia)^[110]	22
Dutch Top 40^[111]	55
Dutch Mega Single Top 100^[112]	9
Hungarian Airplay Chart^[113]	11
Swiss Singles Chart^[114]	8
UK Singles Chart^[115]	83
US Billboard Hot 100^[116]	39

Release history

Country	Date	Format	Label
United States	August 16, 2005^[117]	Mainstream	RCA Records
Worldwide	September 29, 2005^[118]	Digital download remixes	RCA Records
United Kingdom	November 28, 2005^[119]	CD Single	Sony BMG
Germany	February 24, 2006^[120]	CD Single	Sony Music

Cover versions

On June 4, 2011, Britain’s Got Talent contestant, Ronan Parke covered “Because of You” in the finale of the fifth series of the show. His performance garnered standing ovation from the audience as well as the four judges.^[121] Parke also recorded the song and included it in his debut album, Ronan Parke. In an interview with Digital Spy, Parke stated that it was really challenging to record “Because of You.” He added, “I asked the producer if we could leave out some of the big notes. We left them until the end and I was actually a bit scared by the noise that came out of me – I didn’t know I could sound that loud!”^[122] Lisa Tucker covered the song on the fifth season of American Idol. However, her performance was met with negative reviews from the judges and she was consequently eliminated from the show.^[123]^[124] “Because of You” was also covered by Kim Bo Kyung, who was a contestant in South Korean singing competition show, Superstar K2. Her performance received positive response from the judges and was considered as one of the highlights in the show even though she failed to advance into the Top 11.^[125] Following her elimination, she recorded the studio version of “Because of You” which was released as a digital download by Sony Music Entertainment due to an overwhelming demand.^[126] She also received a personal video message from Clarkson who gave her words of advice and support.^[127] The song also was covered by Orange Caramel, a South Korean girl group, on Christmas Day for MBC‘s special programme, “ICON”.^[128]

Reba McEntire and Kelly Clarkson version

“Because of You”

Single by Reba McEntire and Kelly Clarkson

from the album Reba: Duets

Released

May 15, 2007

Format

Recorded

2007

Genre

Country pop

Length

3:45

Reba McEntire chronology

“Love Needs a Holiday”
(2006)

“Because of You”
(2007)

“The Only Promise That Remains”
(2007)

Kelly Clarkson chronology

“Never Again”
(2007)

“Because of You”
(2007)

“Sober”
(2007)

In 2007, Clarkson re-recorded “Because of You” as a duet with American country singer Reba McEntire. The song was released as a single on May 15, 2007, as the lead single for McEntire’s album, Reba: Duets. The duet garnered mixed reviews from critics who felt that even though McEntire’s singing was pleasant, she brought nothing new to the song. At the 50th Grammy Awards, McEntire and Clarkson received a nomination in the category of Best Vocal Country Collaboration for the song. In the United States, “Because of You” became McEntire’s seventh song to peak at number two at Hot Country Songs. It also became Clarkson’s first song to appear on the chart. The music video was directed by Roman White which depicts McEntire and Clarkson as two retro Hollywood lounge singers. The plot centers on Clarkson’s relationship with her abusive partner which is witnessed by McEntire. The song was performed live by the two singers in various venues, notably at the 42nd Annual Academy of Country Music Awards and during their 2 Worlds 2 Voices Tour.

Background and composition

	“Because of You” (2007) Menu 0:00 A 21 second sample of “Because of You”, which incorporates the sound of guitar, strings, cymbals and violin.
Problems playing this file? See media help.

According to McEntire, Clarkson was the first singer to pair up with her for the album Reba: Duets (2007).^[129] She also claimed that “Because of You” was not the original song to be included in the album; it was another song that she recorded with Clarkson entitled “A Lot Like You.”^[130] McEntire explained that it was Narvel, her husband, who convinced her to go back in the studio and record “Because of You” after he heard both McEntire and Clarkson rehearsing the song.^[129] She expressed, “Narvel saw it. That wasn’t one of the songs we had talked about recording – matter of fact, Kelly and I had already recorded a song, ‘A Lot Like You,’ for the duet project, and he said, ‘You’ve got to do this one together,’ so we did.”^[130] Musically, the song is different from the original version. Thom Jhurek of Allmusic described the duet version as “a big, overblown power ballad” which incorporates “guitars compressed to the breaking point, sweeping strings, and enormous crashing cymbals.”^[131] The use of violin was also incorporated into the duet, giving it a melodramatic quality that was deemed “unnecessary” by Nancy Dunham of Blogcritics.^[132] The song was officially sent to radio stations on May 15, 2007, as the lead single from the album.^[133] It was added to country radio playlists on May 28, 2007.^[134]

Critical reception

The song received mixed reviews from critics. Lana Cooper of PopMatters loved the duet and deemed it as “the most unique track on the album.”^[135] She also felt that McEntire and Clarkson complemented each other in the song, writing “The double-feature cover of Clarkson’s hit showcases two women with exceptional and distinctive voices playing to one another’s strengths.”^[135] The same opinion was echoed by Nancy Dunham of Blogcritics who believed that “the two use just the right amount of vocal passion to make the ardent lyrics come alive, but stay out of the cheese zone.”^[132] Scott Sexton of About.com lauded the duet version of the song, writing “As of now anything Reba touches turns to gold, but with this hit alone she has a great shot at platinum.”^[136] Kevin John Coyne of Country Universe praised McEntire’s beautiful singing although he said that she did not bring “anything new” to the song.^[137] He also added that the song “had the potential to be reworked into an interesting mother/daughter confrontation” but he was disappointed because McEntire did not change the viewpoints of the song.^[137] He graded the production of the song as “C-“, writing “The end result is the song doesn’t make any sense, and is just confusing to listen to.”^[138] Thom Jurek of Allmusic criticized the instrumentation of the song, saying “This could have been a Meat Loaf reject from Bat out of Hell II.”^[131] Gayle Thompson of The Boot ranked “Because of You” at number ten in his list of “Top 20 Reba McEntire songs.”^[139] He also included both McEntire and Clarkson at number six for their duet of “Because of You” in his list of “Cross Country: Top 10 Country-Pop Duets.”^[140] Gary Trust of Billboard listed the pair as one of the 10 all-female hit collaborations that have scaled Billboard charts in recent years.^[141] On March 5, 2013 Billboard ranked the song #71 in its list of Top 100 American Idol Hits of All Time.^[142]

At the 42nd Annual Academy of Country Music Awards, McEntire and Clarkson received a nomination in the category of Musical Event of the Year for “Because of You,” but lost to Tracy Lawrence with Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw for their collaboration in “Find Out Who Your Friends Are” (2006).^[143] At the 50th Grammy Awards, McEntire and Clarkson received a nomination in the category of Best Vocal Country Collaboration for the song, but lost to Willie Nelson and Ray Price.^[144] The pair also received a nomination for the Vocal Event of the Year at the 2008 Academy of Country Music, but lost to Tracy Lawrence with Kenny Chesney and Tim McGraw for their collaboration in “Find Out Who Your Friends Are.”^[145] At the 2008 ASCAP Country Music Awards, the song was honoured with the Most Performed Songs award.^[146]

Chart performance

McEntire and Clarkson singing “Because of You” as part of the encore in 2 Worlds 2 Voices Tour.

In the United States, “Because of You” debuted at number 42 on the Hot Country Songs on the week ending June 2, 2007.^[147]^[148]^[149] On the week ending September 8, 2007, the song jumped to its new peak at number two and was held off the top spot by Rodney Atkins‘ “These Are My People” (2007).^[150] It became McEntire’s seventh song to peak at number two, and her first in over ten years.^[151] Had the song jumped to number one, it would have been McEntire’s 23rd number one song on the chart as well as the first remake of a pop song to top Hot Country Songs since Mark Chesnutt‘s cover of Aerosmith‘s “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” spent two weeks at number one in 1999.^[152] “Because of You” also made an appearance on the Billboard Hot 100 at number 52,^[153] and peaked at number 50.^[154] In Canada, the song peaked at number 36 on the week ending July 21, 2007.^[155]

Music video

The music video, directed by Roman White, debuted on June 21, 2007.^[156]^[157] It depicts McEntire and Clarkson as 1930’s Hollywood lounge singers. In the video, McEntire encounters Clarkson attempting to conceal a bruise inflicted by the latter’s abusive partner. When Clarkson’s boyfriend is fighting with her, McEntire leaves the dressing room. While performing on stage, Clarkson witnesses her boyfriend flirting with another woman. After the performance, she smashes a vase out of anger in the dressing room. Her boyfriend enters the room to take her out for the rest of the evening. Though apprehensive, Clarkson leaves on his arm before looking back uncertainly at McEntire, who uncomfortably fiddles with a hairbrush as she watches them leave. The music video hit number one on CMT’s Top 20 Countdown on September 13, 2007.^[158] At the 2008 Country Music Television Awards, the music video received nominations for three awards. It received a nomination for the Video of the Year, but lost to Taylor Swift‘s “Our Song” (2007) and for the Collaborative Video of the Year, but lost to Bon Jovi featuring LeAnn Rimes, “Till We Ain’t Strangers Anymore” (2007). Roman White, who directed the music video, received a nomination for the Video Director of the Year, but lost to Michael Salomon.^[159]

Live performances

McEntire and Clarkson first performed “Because of You” together at the 42nd Annual Academy of Country Music Awards in May 2007.^[160] A month later, the pair performed the song in an episode of CMT Crossroads at Ryman Auditorium which debuted on Country Music Television on June 24, 2007.^[161] On September 19, 2007, they appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show where they sang the song together.^[162] “Because of You” was also performed as the encore of the 2 Worlds 2 Voices Tour (2008), a co-headlining concert tour by McEntire and Clarkson.^[163]

Track listing

US CD Single^[164]

“Because of You” – 3:44
“Because of You” – 3:44
“Because of You” – 3:43

UK Digital Download^[165]

“Because of You” – 3:45

Charts

Chart (2007)	Peak position
Canada (Canadian Hot 100)^[166]	36
US Billboard Hot 100^[167]	50
US Country Songs (Billboard)^[168]	2

Year-end charts

Chart (2007)	Position
US Country Songs (Billboard)^[169]	33

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^ “Superstar K’s Kim Bo Kyung to release single “Because of You””. Allkpop (6Theory Media). November 12, 2010. Retrieved January 11, 2012.
^ “Superstar K2’s Kim Bo Kyung signs with Sony Music”. Allkpop (6Theory Media). December 22, 2010. Retrieved January 11, 2012.
^ “Kim Bo Kyung receives a video message from her idol, Kelly Clarkson”. Allkpop (6Theory Media). September 27, 2011. Retrieved January 11, 2012.
^ “Orange Caramel performs Kelly Clarkson’s “Because of You” on MBC’s “ICON””. Allkpop (6Theory Media). December 25, 2010. Retrieved January 11, 2012.
^ ^a ^b Mansfield, Brian (September 19, 2007). “Kelly Clarkson finds her idol in Reba McEntire”. USA Today. Gannett Company. Retrieved January 9, 2012.
^ ^a ^b “Reba’s Heartfelt Duet with Kelly Clarkson”. Great American Country (Scripps Networks Interactive). July 18, 2007. Retrieved January 10, 2012.
^ ^a ^b Jhurek, Thom. “Reba Duets”. Allmusic. Retrieved January 10, 2012.
^ ^a ^b Dunham, Nancy (October 15, 2007). “Music Review: Reba McEntire – Reba Duets”. Blogcritics (Technorati, Inc). Retrieved January 10, 2012.
^ “McEntire Surrounded By Stars On ‘Reba Duets'”. Billboard. Retrieved January 10, 2012.
^ Country – Week Of: May 28, 2007 Radio & Records. May 28, 2007. Retrieved January 9, 2012
^ ^a ^b Cooper, Lana (October 22, 2007). “Reba McEntire: Reba Duets”. PopMatters. Retrieved January 10, 2012.
^ Sexton, Scott. “Reba McEntire – Duets”. About.com (The New York Times Company). Retrieved January 10, 20122.
^ ^a ^b Coyne, Kevin (October 6, 2007). “Reba McEntire, Reba Duets”. Country Universe. Retrieved January 10, 2012.
^ Coyne, Kevin (May 19, 2007). “Reba McEntire featuring Kelly Clarkson, “Because of You””. Country Universe. Retrieved January 10, 2012.
^ Gayle, Thompson (March 28, 2011). “Top 20 Reba McEntire Songs”. The Boot (AOL). Retrieved January 10, 20122.
^ Gayle, Thompson. “Cross Country: Top 10 Country-Pop Duets”. The Boot (AOL). Retrieved January 10, 2012.
^ Trust, Gary (April 26, 2011). “10 All-Female Hit Collaborations”. Billboard. Retrieved January 10, 2012.
^ http://www.billboard.com/articles/list/1550614/top-100-american-idol-hits-of-all-time?list_page=2
^ Fabian, Shelly. “Winners at the 2007 Country Music Association Awards”. About.com. Retrieved January 11, 2012.
^ “Grammys: Kanye, Winehouse, Springsteen Clean Up Early”. Rolling Stone. February 10, 2008. Retrieved January 11, 2012.
^ Fabian, Shelly. “ACM Winners – Find out who won at the 2008 ACM Awards.”. About.com. Retrieved January 11, 2012.
^ “Complete List of Winners”. American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers. Retrieved January 11, 2012.
^ “Country Songs Week of June 02, 2007”. Billboard. Retrieved January 10, 2012.
^ “Chart Beat”. Billboard. Retrieved January 10, 2012.
^ Fabian, Shelly (May 28, 2007). “Top 10 Hot Country Songs for Week of May 28, 2007”. About.com. Retrieved January 9, 2012.
^ “Country Songs Week of September 08, 2007”. Billboard. September 8, 2007. Retrieved January 10, 2012.
^ “Chart Beat”. Billboard. Retrieved January 10, 2012.
^ Bronson, Fred (September 15, 2007). “Chart Beat”. Billboard. Retrieved January 10, 2012.
^ Cohen, Jonathan (July 5, 2007). “Rihanna, Shop Boyz Still Not Budging On Hot 100”. Billboard. Retrieved January 10, 2012.
^ Grein, Paul (September 29, 2011). “Chart Watch Extra: It Takes Two”. Yahoo! Music. Retrieved January 10, 2012.
^ “Reba McEntire Chart History”. Billboard. July 21, 2007. Retrieved January 10, 2012.
^ “Videos : Reba McEntire : Because of You (featuring Kelly Clarkson)”. Country Music Television. Retrieved January 11, 2012.
^ “Reba McEntire & Kelly Clarkson – Because of You”. MTV. June 22, 2007. Retrieved January 11, 2012.
^ Moss, Carey (September 13, 2007). “Top 20 From Week of September 13, 2007”. Country Music Television. Retrieved January 11, 2012.
^ “2008 CMT Music Awards scorecard”. Los Angeles Times (Tribune Company). April 10, 2008. Retrieved January 11, 2012.
^ Mervis, Scott (October 16, 2008). “How Kelly met Reba”. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (John Robinson Block). Retrieved January 10, 2012.
^ “Kelly Clarkson, Reba McEntire Feel the Love at CMT Crossroads”. Country Music Television. June 20, 2007. Retrieved January 10, 2012.
^ “Superstar Duets”. Oprah.com. September 19, 2007. Retrieved January 10, 2012.
^ C. Stein, Susan (August 20, 2008). “CONCERT REVIEW: Country meets pop as Reba McEntire and Kelly Clarkson strut their stuff”. Reading Eagle (William S. Flippin). Retrieved January 10, 2012.
^ “Because of You (#1) – Reba McEntire”. Allmusic. Retrieved January 11, 2012.
^ “Because of You (feat. Kelly Clarkson) – Single Reba McEntire”. iTunes Store. Apple Inc. Retrieved January 10, 2012.
^ “Reba McEntire Album & Song Chart History” Canadian Hot 100 for Reba McEntire. Prometheus Global Media. Retrieved April 4, 2011.
^ “Reba McEntire Album & Song Chart History” Billboard Hot 100 for Reba McEntire. Prometheus Global Media. Retrieved April 4, 2011.
^ “Reba McEntire Album & Song Chart History” Billboard Country Songs for Reba McEntire. Prometheus Global Media. Retrieved April 4, 2011.
^ “Best of 2007: Country Songs”. Billboard. Prometheus Global Media. 2007. Retrieved July 11, 2012.

Little Rock native David Hodges has song used in “Safe Haven” trailer

March 29, 2013 – 7:48 am

Christina Perri ‘Safe Haven’ Interview- New Album Coming! Published on Feb 6, 2013 http://bit.ly/ClevverMusic – Subscribe to ClevverMusic! We caught up with “Jar of Hearts” singer Christina Perri at the Safe Haven movie premiere where her song “Arms” is featured on the soundtrack. We chatted with her on the red carpet about the song, and […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Tagged david hodges | Edit | Comments (0)

Little Rock native David Hodges wrote song for “Breaking Dawn Part 2″

November 19, 2012 – 7:26 am

David Hodges is a graduate of Arkansas Baptist High School in Little Rock and he co-wrote the song “A Thousand Years,”with Christina Perri. It was featured in the movie “Breaking Dawn Part 2.” David is one of the three founding members of Evanescence and he has written for Kelly Clarkson, Celine Dion, Reba McEntire, Carrie Underwood, […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Katharine McPhee’s hit song co-wrote by Little Rock native David Hodges

February 10, 2012 – 12:42 pm

The “American Idol” contestant-turned-actress is getting positive reviews for her role in “Smash.” The singer plays an actress who is competing for the part of Marilyn Monroe in a Broadway show. The Hollywood Reporter calls it “‘Glee’ for grownups” and Entertainment Weekly calls McPhee “mediocre” but “very likable.” Great song: Uploaded by KatharineMcPheeVEVO on Nov […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Tagged Arkansas Baptist High School, david hodges, Katharine McPhee, Little Rock, The Summitt Church | Edit | Comments (0)

Little Rock native David Hodges co-wrote song for “Breaking Dawn” movie

November 15, 2011 – 5:16 pm

Little Rock native and Arkansas Baptist High School graduate David Hodges co-wrote a song for the blockbuster movie “Breaking Dawn” that comes out this Friday. Interview: Breaking Dawn’s Christina Perri Twi’s Hard, Dreams Big By Leah Collins, Dose.ca Nov 1, 2011 More Images » OMG. Christina Perri went from a […]

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Tagged billboard 200 chart, breaking dawn,david hodges, getty images, twilight compilation | Edit | Comments (0)

Little Rock native David Hodges writes another #1 hit for Carrie Underwoodel

July 2, 2013 – 12:06 am

On June 28, 2013 Underwood was back on top with a song that Little Rock native David Hodges who graduated at Arkansas Baptist High School help write. Carrie Underwood “Sees” No. 1 Again onTop 20 By Sarah Wyland | Leave a Comment Carrie Underwood photo courtesy of Sony Music Nashville. Carrie Underwood current single title is prophetic. She makes […]

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By Everette Hatcher III | Comments (0)

DARWINISM RECONSIDERED article from 2005 quotes Antony Flew, Richard Dawkins, Jonathan Miller, and Phillip Johnson

April 11, 2014 – 1:10 am

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William Lane Craig versus Eddie Tabash Debate

Uploaded on Feb 6, 2012

Secular Humanism versus Christianity, Lawyer versus Theologian. Evangelical Christian apologist William Lane Craig debates humanist atheist lawyer Eddie Tabash at Pepperdine University, February 8, 1999. Visit http://www.Infidels.org and http://www.WilliamLaneCraig.com

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Antony Flew on God and Atheism

Published on Feb 11, 2013

News on Antony Flew’s conversion:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1e4FU…

Interview and discussion with Antony Flew:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53REH…

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Kalam Cosmological Argument – Douglas Groothuis, PhD

Published on Jul 13, 2012

Doug Groothuis gives a lecture on the Kalam Cosmological Argument. What’s interesting about this lecture is that Groothuis did not accept the Kalam Cosmological Argument at first but was later convinced by it.

Notes:

http://www.relyonchrist.com/Lecture/1…
http://www.relyonchrist.com/Lecture/1…

Kalam Cosmological Argument

(Moreland, Scaling the Secular City; see also William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith [Crossway, 1994]; Paul Copan and William Lane Craig, Creation from Nothing [Baker, 2004]; William Lane Craig and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, God: A Debate Between a Christian and an Atheist [Oxford, 2004])

Preliminary: concepts of (a) the actual infinite and (b) the potential infinite

1. The universe had a beginning
2. The impossibility of the actual infinite (distinguish from potential infinite)
3. The impossibility of traversing an actual infinite (even if it exists); forming an actual infinite through successive addition, piece by piece…
4. Scientific confirmation from Big Bang cosmology (absolute origination). See also John Jefferson Davis, “Genesis 1:1 and Big Bang Cosmology,” in The Frontiers of Science and Faith (InterVarsity, 2002), 11 — 36; and Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers (revised ed., 1992).
5. Scientific confirmation from second law of thermodynamics.
6. Astronomer Fred Hoyle (who once advanced the steady state cosmology) argues against the universe being infinitely old in virtue of its hydrogen consumption. The argument can be stated as a modus tolens deduction (denying the consequent).
7. Can everything come from nothing without a cause? The “pop theory” (biting the metaphysical bullet)
8. Philosophical critique of everything from nothing…
9. God and time (see Greg Gansell, editor, God and Time: Four Views [InterVarsity, 2001])
10. Argument against an impersonal cause
11. Argument against God needing a cause (Bertrand Russell)
12. Quentin Smith’s acceptance of Big Bang cosmology and denial of God’s existence.
13. Unitary: Ockham’s razor
14. Incorrigible, inextinguishable (having existed, God cannot fail to exist)
15. Personal, volitional (“personal explanation”—R. Swinburne)
16. Omnipotent: nothing is a greater expenditure of power than exnihilating the entire cosmos. This is rational to hold, given the argument.
17. Supplies the necessary conditions for impeccable and omnipotent goodness: (1) – (4). Need (5) moral argument and (6) the Incarnation for the final necessary condition, which, with (1) – (4), make for necessary and sufficient conditions.

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Darwinism Reconsidered by Colin Dye

The Tour

Charles Darwin

In October and November 2004, Prof Phillip Johnson, a leading proponent of Intelligent Design (ID), and Dr Andrew Snelling, a geologist, toured the UK giving lectures questioning popular scientific views of origins. Across the country, over 8,000 people attended the lectures, which included their visit to Kensington Temple. One year on, what has developed in the UK?

Antony Flew

December 2004 saw a flurry of interest in ID in the British press, as it became public knowledge that Antony Flew of the University of Reading had become a theist. For over 50 years Prof Flew had been a leading atheist, but had changed his views because of evidence of design in the natural world. On the December 17th he was interviewed on the Radio 4 Today programme, where he said:

“I believe myself that there are signs of intelligent design… the thing that shows intelligent design is the development from inanimate matter to living matter to the very, very big step of producing a creature capable of reproduction… I have always followed in my philosophical life the principle that Plato’s Socrates accepts, we must follow the argument wherever it leads and I have followed the argument to see this intelligence at the stage before the origin of species. I think it’s an insoluble problem to show how bits and pieces of inanimate matter might have become living matter and then have developed this enormously complex creature.”

The Radio 4 programme followed with a discussion led by Prof Steve Jones, geneticist and author from University College London and Stephen Meyer, Director of the Discovery Institute Center for Science and Culture in Seattle, who holds a PhD in the philosophy of science from Cambridge University. While Prof Jones dismissed advocates of ID as “cranks”, Dr Meyer cited recent advances in biochemistry and molecular biology as evidence for the theory and recommended a new book published by Cambridge University Press, titled Debating Design.

Controversy in Nature

In spring 2005, controversy over how to deal with Intelligent Design broke out in the pages of Nature, the world’s leading science journal, based in London. On April 28th its editorial urged scientists to engage with Intelligent Design, and “point to options other than intelligent design for reconciling science and belief” in science classes. The issue, which devoted its front cover to the debate over evolution, also had news articles on ID clubs in American universities.

On May 19th, leading evolutionists including Richard Dawkins, Steve Jones, Lewis Wolpert and Peter Atkins responded with a letter in Nature maintaining that the editor’s “…suggestion is misguided: the science classroom is the wrong place to teach students how to reconcile science and religion. For one thing, many scientists deem such a reconciliation impossible because faith and science are two mutually exclusive ways of looking at the world… students who cannot handle scientific challenges to their faith should seek guidance from a theologian, not a scientist.”

This generated the following response from a Princeton physicist: “They take the naive viewpoint that religious and scientific thought must be in conflict. That is not the only, in fact not even (historically) the most prevalent, mode of addressing these two important subjects. Most of the founding fathers of western science had no difficulty reconciling their religious beliefs with their scientific pursuits. In fact, the latter grew out of the former.”

School education

In February 2005, the subject of ID was raised in the House of Lords. Lord Pearson asked Lord Filkin, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Department of Education and Skills “whether the scientific theory of Intelligent Design could be taught in UK schools.” Lord Filkin replied:

“In all aspects of the science curriculum, we encourage pupils to consider different ideas and beliefs, and how scientific controversies can arise from different ways of interpreting evidence. Intelligent Design theory is not part of the National Curriculum. The National Curriculum for science states that students must learn that the fossil record is evidence for evolution and how variation and selection may lead to evolution or extinction. Intelligent Design theory could be discussed in schools, but only in the context of being one of a range of views on evolution that students might consider and evaluate against the evidence.”

The Emmanuel College controversy continued to be mentioned regularly through the year. On May 5th, Prof Steve Jones launched an attack on the school accusing it of “lies’ for teaching pupils that there is an active debate over Darwin’s basic ideas: “To tell students there is an active debate within biology about the subject of evolution is simply false”, he wrote.

Steve Jones’ comments contrasted with those of Terence Kealey, biochemist and Vice-Chancellor of Buckingham University who wrote an article for The Times: “What is…Intelligent Design?” Though he dismissed the theory of ID as “transparently absurd”, he wrote: “I have no objection to ID being taught in schools as long as Darwinism gets equal time”. (December 18th, 2004).

In June 2005 Focus magazine published results of an online poll where 35% of voters said that creationism should be taught alongside evolution in our schools.

Richard Dawkins

The end of 2004 saw the publication of Dawkin’s God (a devastating critique of Richard Dawkin’s atheism) by Alister McGrath, Professor of Historical Theology at Oxford University.

Richard Dawkins hit the headlines on January 5th 2005 for declaring “faith” in Darwin. When asked: “What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?” he replied, “I believe but I cannot prove that all life, all intelligence, all creativity and all “design’ anywhere in the universe is the direct or indirect product of Darwinian natural selection”.

Prof Dawkins twice stepped into the ID debate, once in The Times, with an article “Creationism: God’s gift to the ignorant’ (May 21st 2005), and in The Guardian “One side can be wrong’ (September 1st 2005). “The seductive “let’s teach the controversy’ language still conveys the false, and highly pernicious idea that there really are two sides.” He claims than acceptance of this idea “would be the end of science education in America”.

Anthony Latham, a Scottish doctor, published a book length critique of Darwinism titled The Naked Emperor which includes a rebuttal of Dawkin’s work The Blind Watchmaker.

Dawkins’ faith position on the matter of natural selection was made clear in a BBC 2 documentary by Jonathan Miller screened in November 2005. Miller was discussing natural selection as the evolutionary mechanism and questioned Dawkins on the evolution of the feather. Dawkins made the point that all mutations that led to the formation of the feather would have to have been advantageous. If we couldn’t think of what these series of advantages could be it would not be a problem to the theory as the theory of natural selection is so coherent and powerful in itself. He admitted that this was “a matter of faith’ on his part. A telling admission indeed!

Events in the USA

Much media coverage of ID in the UK concerned events in the USA. In May, a school district in Cobb County, GA, was ordered by a judge to remove stickers stating that “evolution is a theory, not a fact” from its science textbooks. In November, the Kansas State Board of Education adopted teaching standards that support ID.

Most attention went to the small town of Dover in Pennsylvania, were a court case was held to determine whether or not ID could be taught in science lessons. This was mentioned in most newspapers at least once, and featured on Radio 4 “Crossing Continents’ (March 3rd). British magazine New Scientist called for the attempts in Dover to be “challenged” claiming “The education of America’s schoolchildren and the future of American science, depends on it.” (October 1st 2005). Prof Steve Fuller, of the University of Warwick, was an expert witness for the ID side.

Though most coverage of ID in the USA by the British media was negative, The Mail on Sunday ran a very balanced review by Peter Hitchens (August 21st) “Get used to hearing the expression “Intelligent Design’ as an alternative explanation for the origin of the species and man” he wrote, “What we all believe may not be true.” The Guardian published a surprisingly fair interview with Prof Michael Behe, leading ID scientist, on September 12th 2005.

To very little media coverage in the UK, on August 5th 2005, US Office of Special Counsel concluded that Dr Richard Sternberg had been seriously wronged by the Smithsonian Institution and its Natural Museum of Natural History, when efforts were made to sack him or force his resignation, after he published a paper on Intelligent Design in a journal which he edited.

The controversy over evolution also featured on the front pages of National Geographic (“Was Darwin wrong?’ November 2004), Discover (“Testing Darwin: Scientists at Michigan State Prove Evolution Works’ February 2005), Seven Days the magazine of the Sunday Herald, Scotland (“Was Darwin wrong? The new war on evolution’ September 4th 2005) and the New Scientist (“The end of reason: Creationism’s new front in the battle of ideas’ July 9th 2005).

Controversy amongst Christians

ID was also debated in the Christian world. Prof Simon Conway Morris wrote against ID in the Church Times on 25th Feb 2005. He said, “In my opinion, ID is a false, misleading attraction”. Both sides of the argument were published in the monthly newspaper Evangelicals Now and the magazine of the Evangelical Alliance, IDEA.

Blogs

There are now three weblogs which follow ID debate in the UK: exilefromgroggs.blogspot.com idintheuk.blogspot.com idpluspeterswilliams.blogspot.com

Conclusion

While significant debate of intelligent design has occurred in the UK over the past year, leading evolutionists continue to deny that any such debate is occurring. Academics and scientists and others with an acute interest in the philosophical implications of neo-Darwinism and its other face, Naturalism, are not watching passively. Active consideration is being given to encouraging further debate following the Darwin Reconsidered autumn 2004 speaking tour.

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Former Atheist Antony Flew noted that Evolutionists failed to show “Where did a living, self-reproducing organism come from in the first place?”

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Educated Scholars like Antony Flew can believe in God!!!

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Tagged Antony Flew | Edit | Comments (0)

Antony Flew rightly noted that Richard Dawkins’ “monkey theorem was a load of rubbish”

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Tagged Antony Flew, Richard Dawkins | Edit| Comments (0)

Article from 2005 indicated Antony Flew abandoned atheism because of Law of Biogenesis!!!!

The Christian influence on society is real and that is one of the reasons Antony Flew left Atheism!!!

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

Antony Flew, George Wald and David Noebel on the Origin of Life

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Atheists Confronted, Current Events, Francis Schaeffer | Edit| Comments (0)

The Fine Tuning Argument for the Existence of God from Antony Flew!

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Tagged Antony Flew | Edit | Comments (0)

Mark Oppenheimer of Time Magazine claims Antony Flew was convinced by PSEUDOSCIENCE that God exists!!!

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Current Events | Edit | Comments (0)

A review of “There is a God” by Antony Flew March 31, 2012

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Uncategorized | Edit | Comments (0)

Review of Antony Flew Book: THERE IS A GOD Article by R.C. Sproul May 2008

By Everette Hatcher III | Posted in Adrian Rogers, Francis Schaeffer | Tagged Antony Flew,R.C.Sproul | Edit | Comments (0)

By Everette Hatcher III | Comments (0)

Antony Flew interviewed by Benjamin Wiker and the two reasons Flew left atheism!!!

April 10, 2014 – 1:57 am

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Discussion (1 of 3): Antony Flew, N.T. Wright, and Gary Habermas

Uploaded on Sep 22, 2010

A discussion with Antony Flew, N.T. Wright, and Gary Habermas. This was held at Westminster Chapel March, 2008

Debate – William Lane Craig vs Christopher Hitchens – Does God Exist?

Uploaded on Jan 27, 2011

April 4, 2009 – Craig vs. Hitchens Debate from Biola University.

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The Bible and Science (Part 02)

Antony Flew left atheism because of the scientists he respected saw an Intelligence behind the complex universe and the bankruptcy of the secular view of the origin of life.

How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind

by Dr. Benjamin Wiker
Filed under Conversion

359 Comments

EDITOR’S NOTE: For the last half of the twentieth century, Antony Flew (1923-2010) was the world’s most famous atheist. Long before Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris began taking swipes at religion, Flew was the preeminent spokesman for unbelief.

However in 2004, he shocked the world by announcing he had come to believe in God. While never embracing Christianity—Flew only believed in the deistic, Aristotelian conception of God—he became one of the most high-profile and surprising atheist converts. In 2007, he recounted his conversion in a book titled There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind. Some critics suggested Flew’s mental capacity had declined and therefore we should question the credibility of his conversion. Others hailed Flew’s book as a legitimate and landmark publication.

A couple months before the book’s release, Flew sat down with Strange Notions contributor Dr. Benjamin Wiker for an interview about his book, his conversion, and the reasons that led him to God. Read below and enjoy!

Dr. Benjamin Wiker: You say in There is a God, that “it may well be that no one is as surprised as I am that my exploration of the Divine has after all these years turned from denial…to discovery.” Everyone else was certainly very surprised as well, perhaps all the more so since on our end, it seemed so sudden. But in There is a God, we find that it was actually a very gradual process—a “two decade migration,” as you call it. God was the conclusion of a rather long argument, then. But wasn’t there a point in the “argument” where you found yourself suddenly surprised by the realization that “There is a God” after all? So that, in some sense, you really did “hear a Voice that says” in the evidence itself “‘Can you hear me now?'”

Antony Flew: There were two factors in particular that were decisive. One was my growing empathy with the insight of Einstein and other noted scientists that there had to be an Intelligence behind the integrated complexity of the physical Universe. The second was my own insight that the integrated complexity of life itself—which is far more complex than the physical Universe—can only be explained in terms of an Intelligent Source. I believe that the origin of life and reproduction simply cannot be explained from a biological standpoint despite numerous efforts to do so. With every passing year, the more that was discovered about the richness and inherent intelligence of life, the less it seemed likely that a chemical soup could magically generate the genetic code. The difference between life and non-life, it became apparent to me, was ontological and not chemical. The best confirmation of this radical gulf is Richard Dawkins’ comical effort to argue in The God Delusion that the origin of life can be attributed to a “lucky chance.” If that’s the best argument you have, then the game is over. No, I did not hear a Voice. It was the evidence itself that led me to this conclusion.

Wiker: You are famous for arguing for a presumption of atheism, i.e., as far as arguments for and against the existence of God, the burden of proof lies with the theist. Given that you believe that you only followed the evidence where it led, and it led to theism, it would seem that things have now gone the other way, so that the burden of proof lies with the atheist. He must prove that God doesn’t exist. What are your thoughts on that?

Flew: I note in my book that some philosophers indeed have argued in the past that the burden of proof is on the atheist. I think the origins of the laws of nature and of life and the Universe point clearly to an intelligent Source. The burden of proof is on those who argue to the contrary.

Wiker: As for evidence, you cite a lot of the most recent science, yet you remark that your discovery of the Divine did not come through “experiments and equations,” but rather, “through an understanding of the structures they unveil and map.” Could you explain? Does that mean that the evidence that led you to God is not really, at heart, scientific?

Flew: It was empirical evidence, the evidence uncovered by the sciences. But it was a philosophical inference drawn from the evidence. Scientists as scientists cannot make these kinds of philosophical inferences. They have to speak as philosophers when they study the philosophical implications of empirical evidence.

Wiker: You are obviously aware of the spate of recent books by such atheists as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. They think that those who believe in God are behind the times. But you seem to be politely asserting that they are ones who are behind the times, insofar as the latest scientific evidence tends strongly toward—or perhaps even demonstrates—a theistic conclusion. Is that a fair assessment of your position?

Flew: Yes, indeed. I would add that Dawkins is selective to the point of dishonesty when he cites the views of scientists on the philosophical implications of the scientific data.

Two noted philosophers, one an agnostic (Anthony Kenny) and the other an atheist (Thomas Nagel), recently pointed out that Dawkins has failed to address three major issues that ground the rational case for God. As it happens, these are the very same issues that had driven me to accept the existence of a God: the laws of nature, life with its teleological organization, and the existence of the Universe.

Wiker: You point out that the existence of God and the existence of evil are actually two different issues, which would therefore require two distinct investigations. But in the popular literature—even in much of the philosophical literature—the two issues are regularly conflated. Especially among atheists, the presumption is that the non-existence of God simply follows upon the existence of evil. What is the danger of such conflation? How as a theist do you now respond?

Flew: I should clarify that I am a deist. I do not accept any claim of divine revelation though I would be happy to study any such claim (and continue to do so in the case of Christianity). For the deist, the existence of evil does not pose a problem because the deist God does not intervene in the affairs of the world. The religious theist, of course, can turn to the free-will defense (in fact I am the one who first coined the phrase free-will defense). Another relatively recent change in my philosophical views is my affirmation of the freedom of the will.

Wiker: According to There is a God, you are not what might be called a “thin theist,” that is, the evidence led you not merely to accept that there is a “cause” of nature, but “to accept the existence of a self-existent, immutable, immaterial, omnipotent, and omniscient Being.” How far away are you, then, from accepting this Being as a person rather than a set of characteristics, however accurate they may be? (I’m thinking of C. S. Lewis’ remark that a big turning point for him, in accepting Christianity, was in realizing that God was not a “place”—a set of characteristics, like a landscape—but a person.)

Flew: I accept the God of Aristotle who shares all the attributes you cite. Like Lewis I believe that God is a person but not the sort of person with whom you can have a talk. It is the ultimate being, the Creator of the Universe.

Wiker: Do you plan to write a follow-up book to There is a God?

Flew: As I said in opening the book, this is my last will and testament.

Originally published at To the Source. Used with author’s permission.
(Image credit: Skeptic.com)

Written by Dr. Benjamin Wiker

Dr. Benjamin Wiker is, first of all, a husband and a father of seven children. He graduated from Furman University with a B.A. in Political Philosophy. He has an M.A. in Religion and a Ph.D. in Theological Ethics, both from Vanderbilt University. Dr. Wiker taught full time for thirteen years, first at Marquette University, then St. Mary’s University (MN), Thomas Aquinas College (CA), and finally Franciscan University (OH). During these many years, he offered a wide variety of courses in philosophy, theology, history, the history and philosophy of science, the history of ethics, the Great Books, Latin, and even mathematics. He is now a full-time writer and speaker, with eleven books published including 10 Books That Screwed Up the World: And 5 Others That Didn’t Help(Regnery, 2008); The Darwin Myth: The Life and Lies of Charles Darwin (Regnery, 2009); and Answering the New Atheism: Dismantling Dawkins’ Case Against God (Emmaus Road, 2008). Some of Benjamin’s books are also integrated into the Logos software. Follow Dr. Wiker atBenjaminWiker.com.

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Former Atheist Antony Flew noted that Evolutionists failed to show “Where did a living, self-reproducing organism come from in the first place?”

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Educated Scholars like Antony Flew can believe in God!!!

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Antony Flew rightly noted that Richard Dawkins’ “monkey theorem was a load of rubbish”

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Article from 2005 indicated Antony Flew abandoned atheism because of Law of Biogenesis!!!!

The Christian influence on society is real and that is one of the reasons Antony Flew left Atheism!!!

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Antony Flew, George Wald and David Noebel on the Origin of Life

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The Fine Tuning Argument for the Existence of God from Antony Flew!

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Mark Oppenheimer of Time Magazine claims Antony Flew was convinced by PSEUDOSCIENCE that God exists!!!

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A review of “There is a God” by Antony Flew March 31, 2012

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Review of Antony Flew Book: THERE IS A GOD Article by R.C. Sproul May 2008

http://www.reasonablefaith.org

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Kyle Butt notes that Antony Flew left Atheism but fell short of making a profession of faith during his lifetime

April 9, 2014 – 1:59 am

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Antony Flew – World’s Most Famous Atheist Accepts Existence of God

Uploaded on Nov 28, 2008

Has Science Discovered God?

For More Info Visit:
http://ScienceFindsGod.com

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Is God a Delusion? – William Lane Craig vs Lewis Wolpert

Published on Apr 30, 2012

Professor Craig debated Professor Wolpert at Central Hall, Westminster, Feb. 28, 2007, with John Humphrys in the chair. Professor Wolpert is Professor of Biology as Applied to Medicine at University College, London and is well known for his atheistic beliefs.

We welcome your comments in the Reasonable Faith forums:
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/forums

The Bible and Science (Part 01)

Making Sense of Faith and Science

Uploaded on May 16, 2008

Dr. H. Fritz Schaefer confronts the assertion that one cannot believe in God and be a credible scientist. He explains that the theistic world view of Bacon, Kepler, Pascal, Boyle, Newton, Faraday and Maxwell was instrumental in the rise of modern science itself. Presented as part of the Let There be Light series. Series: Let There Be Light [5/2003] [Humanities] [Show ID: 7338]

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Kyle Butt notes that Antony Flew leaves Atheism but fell short of making a profession of faith during his lifetime.

Former Atheist, Antony Flew, Dies at 87

by	Kyle Butt, M.A.

For many years, Antony Flew reigned as arguably the most able defender of atheism in the world. In fact, the subheading of one of Flew’s last books described him as “the world’s most notorious atheist” (Flew and Varghese, 2007). Flew’s monumental paper “Theology and Falsification,” which he “first presented at a 1950 meeting of the Oxford University Socratic Club chaired by C.S. Lewis, became the most widely reprinted philosophical publication of the last century” (2007, pp. vii-viii, emp. added). He authored more than 30 books, including his now-famous The Presumption of Atheism (“Antony Flew…,” 2010).

In spite of his atheistic teaching and writings, Flew rocked the atheistic community in 2004 when he announced that he had changed his mind (see Miller, 2004). He concluded that enough evidence had accrued to prove that some type of intelligent designer must be behind the origin of the Universe. In his book, There Is a God, co-written with Roy Varghese, Flew wrote:

The leaders of science over the last hundred years, along with some of today’s most influential scientists, have built a philosophically compelling vision of a rational universe that sprang from a divine Mind. As it happens, this is the particular view of the world that I now find to be the soundest philosophical explanation of the multitude of phenomena encountered by scientists and laypeople alike (2007, p. 91).

Of course, the atheistic community did not appreciate his “conversion.” Some prominent atheists accused him of being senile and attempted to downplay his book, claiming that he did not write much of it, but simply put his name on the material Roy Varghese wrote. Flew responded by explaining that he was not senile, and that the evidence for a divine Mind was inescapable.

Flew’s courageous decision to defy the atheistic community and admit that the evidence demands a divine Creator is commendable. His bravery brought to light the fact that the “advocates of tolerance were not themselves very tolerant. And, apparently, religious zealots don’t have a monopoly on dogmatism, incivility, fanaticism, and paranoia” (2007, p. viii). Flew experienced the ugly reality that creationists endure on a regular basis: those who believe in a Creator are persecuted for standing for the truth.

In spite of Flew’s bravery, his position failed to follow all the evidence to its logical conclusion. Flew, unfortunately, held a deistic belief in a divine Creator “who takes no interest in human affairs” (“Anthony Flew…,” 2010). He did not follow his quest for truth to the end of the path that would have led to the acceptance of Christianity (see Butt and Lyons, 2006).

On April 8, 2010, Antony Flew died at the age of 87 after fighting a long illness (“Antony Flew…,” 2010). He will be remembered for the writing he did in favor of atheism, and his courageous stand late in his life against that false philosophy. His life should remind us all that standing for the truth, in the face of fierce opposition, is the admirable course to take. His life should also encourage us not to stop at a mere belief in a Creator, but to invest our lives completely in the pursuit of identifying that Creator’s will for our lives (see Lyons and Butt, n.d.).

[NOTE: For more information, see the 1976 Warren-Flew Debate]

REFERENCES

“Anthony Flew, Once a Prominent Atheist, Dies at 87” (2010), April 14, http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100414/ap_on_re_eu/eu_britain_obit_flew.

Butt, Kyle and Eric Lyons (2006), Behold! The Lamb of God: Exploring the Historicity, Deity, and Personality of Christ (Montgomery, AL: Apologetics Press).

Flew, Antony and Roy Varghese (2007), There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind (New York: Harper Collins).

Lyons, Eric and Kyle Butt (2010), Receiving the Gift of Salvation (Montgomery, AL: Apologetics Press), http://www.apologeticspress.org/pdfs/e-books_pdf/Receiving%20the%20Gift%20of%20Salvation.pdf.

Miller, Dave (2004), “Atheist Finally ‘Sobers Up,’”http://www.apologeticspress.org/articles/2662.

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Antony Flew rightly noted that Richard Dawkins’ “monkey theorem was a load of rubbish”

________ Antony Flew rightly noted that Richard Dawkins’ ”monkey theorem was a load of rubbish.” Sunday, 9 September 2012 Why Richard Dawkins’ typing monkey theorem is a load of nonsense The infinite monkey theorem states that a monkey hitting keys at random on a typewriter keyboard for an infinite amount of time will almost surely type a […]

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Article from 2005 indicated Antony Flew abandoned atheism because of Law of Biogenesis!!!!

___________ Article from 2005 indicated Antony Flew abandoned atheism because of Law of Biogenesis!!!! Weighing the Evidence An Atheist Abandons Atheism By Chuck Colson|Published Date: January 10, 2005 Antony Flew, the 81-year-old British philosophy professor who taught at Oxford and other leading universities, became an atheist at age 15. Throughout his long career he argued […]

The Christian influence on society is real and that is one of the reasons Antony Flew left Atheism!!!

The Christian influence on society is real and that is one of the reasons Antony Flew left Atheism!!! Beggar to Beggar Saved by Increments By Chuck Colson|Published Date: January 11, 2005 A leading intellectual elaborates on why he abandoned atheism. But, surprisingly, he says his reasons were not entirely intellectual. British philosophy professor Dr. Antony […]

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Antony Flew, George Wald and David Noebel on the Origin of Life

In the below comment section David Noebel stated the following: Since writing my article on the origin of life I have read two books that basically make the same point and I will quote briefly from them, but encourage anyone interested in the subject to read both books from cover to cover: (1) John C. […]

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The Fine Tuning Argument for the Existence of God from Antony Flew!

___________ The Fine Tuning Argument for the Existence of God from Antony Flew! Imagine entering a hotel room on your next vacation. The CD player on the bedside table is softly playing a track from your favorite recording. The framed print over the bed is identical to the image that hangs over the fireplace at […]

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Mark Oppenheimer of Time Magazine claims Antony Flew was convinced by PSEUDOSCIENCE that God exists!!!

_____________ Mark Oppenheimer of Time Magazine claims Antony Flew was convinced by PSEUDOSCIENCE that God exists!!! Below you will read: ”There Is a God” is perhaps the handiest primer ever written on the science (many would say pseudoscience) of religious belief. Regis Nicoll does a good job of refuting the claim that Flew was manipulated by […]

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A review of “There is a God” by Antony Flew March 31, 2012

________ During the 1990′s I actually made it a practice to write famous atheists and scientists that were mentioned by Adrian Rogers and Francis Schaeffer and challenge them with the evidence for the Bible’s historicity and the claims of the gospel. Usually I would send them a cassette tape of Adrian Rogers’ messages “6 reasons I […]

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Review of Antony Flew Book: THERE IS A GOD Article by R.C. Sproul May 2008