Agnosticism: conversion

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Have any FAMOUS atheists ever converted to Christianity? C.S. Lewis and Josh McDowell

Thomas Cook writes: Hi guys,
This is going to be a pretty dumb question. But… Was CS Lewis ever an atheist? I was just briefly watching a show about him, and I thought the show hinted that he was an atheist.
I looked on the net, but I only found pro Christian stuff.
Thanks,
Thomas

Edward Babinski: There are Christians who consider themselves “former atheists,” but certainly not “famous ones,” aside from Madelyn Murray OʼHairʼs son, Bill, who converted to Christianity while an adult alcoholic. But he was merely famous for being the subject of her lawsuit to remove prayer from the schools, and he was quite young and immature of mind when he was “famous.” Aside from him there are no famous atheists I can think of who have later converted to Christianity, certainly not after having penned some impressive atheist books, or been atheist leaders. While there ARE a few famous Christians, like Charles Templeton who was one of the most impressive preachers in all of North America, had the biggest Youth for Christ group, preached on alternative nights in Europe with Billy Graham during the Youth for Christ crusades in Europe, and even was chosen by the U.S. Council of Churches to represent them, the first official “Evangelist for the U.S. Council of Churches,” and had his own religious TV show in the 1950s, “Look Up and Live,” who later “walked away from God,” and who wrote a book about why he did so.

Lewis, like Josh McDowell, became “famous Christians,” but were never “famous atheists,” and in fact they didnʼt begin to speak of themselves and firmly picture themselves as “former atheists” until they became Christians. But for all of their “former atheism,” neither Lewis, like McDowell, wrote anything noteworthy on the subject prior to becoming a Christian. I seem to recall in Lewisʼ autobiography, SURPRISED BY JOY, that he had been raised Anglican, and, quote, “decided to rejoin the church” during a trip to the zoo. Lewis apparently had no firm or well thought out beliefs of his own until he became attracted to Hegalianism in college, a type of theistic philosophy. Then still later he read Chestertonʼs THE EVERLASTING MAN which is the book that Lewis credited with making him consider the historical truth of Christianity, probably since Chesterton's theme is to try and prove that in this one stance, “myth became reality,” and Lewis was a huge student of mythology, he loved myths before he ever loved the Gospels. Till his dying day, when asked to suggest books on why to become a Christian, Lewis wrote letters back to people suggesting they read Chesteronʼs book. Lewis even stole and expanded upon Chestertonʼs own “Liar, Lunatic, or Lord” argument. But in the end, neither Lewis nor Chesterton were aware of Biblical scholarship in anything but the most cursory Sunday School sense. They both loved myths and stories though.

Lewis also wrote a novelistic version of his religious journey, Lewisʼ earliest semi-autobiographical Christian work, titled, THE PILGRIMʼS REGRESS, an updated version of Bunyanʼs Christian classic, THE PILGRIMʼS PROGRESS. I donʼt believe Lewis pictured himself as an “atheist” in that book, but as a sort of Everyman, as Bunyan also pictured his main character. Though the main character in Lewisʼ novel did meet and chat with “Mr. Atheist,” I believe.

“Now that I am a Christian I do have moods in which the whole thing looks very improbable.”

—C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Great admission, though Lewis then went on to add,

“…but when I was an atheist I had moods in which Christianity looked terribly probable. This rebellion of your moods against your real self is going to come anyway. That is why Faith is such a necessary virtue: unless you teach your moods where they get off, you can never be either a sound Christian or even a sound atheist, but just a creature dithering to and fro, with its beliefs really dependent on the weather and the state of its digestion. Consequently one must train the habit of Faith."

Unfortunately, Lewis merely “dithered” around with not much more than your average Sunday School knowledge of the Bible and Gospel comparisons, and believed that the Gospels were history because they “didnʼt seem like myths,” i.e., to Lewis.

Famed Atheist Philosopher, Antony Flew, Now a Theist/Deist

Edward: Famed lifelong atheist philosopher, Antony Flew (age 81),has become a theist / deist. The London TIMES had this to say about Flewʼs recent conversion: “He [Flew] is unlikely to proclaim his faith from a pulpit. He is still not a Christian and dismisses the conventional forms of divinity as ‘the monstrous oriental despots of the religions of Christianity and Islam.’ He also stands by his rejection of an afterlife.”

Flew: “Iʼm thinking of a God very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam, because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins,” he said. “It could be a person in the sense of a being that has intelligence and a purpose, I suppose.”

In his lengthiest inteview thus far about his theism (an interview with Liberty University Christian apologist Gary Habermas), Flew had this to add:

Habermas: “In your view, then, God hasnʼt done anything about evil.”

Flew: No, not at all, other than producing a lot of it…

Habermas: Are you any closer to thinking that the resurrection could have been a historical fact?

Flew: No, I donʼt think so… What we do not have is evidence from anyone who was in Jerusalem at the time, who witnessed one of the allegedly miraculous events, and recorded his or her testimony immediately after the occurrence of that allegedly miraculous event. In the 1950s and 1960s I heard several suggestions from hard-bitten young Australian and American philosophers of conceivable miracles the actual occurrence of which, it was contended, no one could have overlooked or denied. Why, they asked, if God wanted to be recognized and worshipped, did God not produce a miracle of this unignorable and undeniable kind?”… [According to Luke-Acts, the raised Jesusʼ ascension into heaven was only witnessed by the eleven apostles, and even Luke-Acts admits that there was no preaching of “the resurrection” until seven weeks after the crucifixion.]

Habermas: Do you think that there is any chance that you might in the end move from theism to Christianity?

Flew: I think itʼs very unlikely, due to the problem of evil. But, if it did happen, I think it would be in some eccentric fit and doubtfully orthodox form: regular religious practice perhaps but without belief. If I wanted any sort of future life I should become a Jehovahʼs Witness [because at least their paradise involves corporeal persons; and Flew said earlier in the interview: “I think those who want to speak about an afterlife have got to meet the difficulty of formulating a concept of an incorporeal person… it is simply impossible to create a concept of an incorporeal spirit… Swinburne and I had been the only Gifford lecturers to treat the question of a future life for the sixty years past. Even more remarkably, Swinburne in his Gifford Lectures ignored Bishop Butlerʼs decisive observation: ‘Memory may reveal but cannot constitute personal identity.’”

One should also note that in the realm of philosophy, many theistic philosophers as well as Christian theistic philosophers, have been unable to agree on quite a lot of questions. See Contemporary Debates in the Philosophy of Religion (2003) by Michael Peterson, managing editor of the journal Faith and Philosophy, published by the Society of Christian Philosophers. Here are some questions from that book, questions on which theistic philosophers disagree:

Can Only One Religion Be True?
How to Sink in Cognitive Quicksand: Nuancing Religious Pluralism: Keith E.Yandell (University of Wisconsin)
It Is Not Reasonable to Believer that Only One Religion is True: Peter Byrne (Kingʼs College, University of London)
Does God Take Risks in Governing the World?
God Takes Risks: William Hasker (Huntington College)
God Does Not Take Risks: Paul Helm (Regent College)
Does God Respond to Petitionary Prayer?
God Responds to Prayer: Michael J. Murray (Franklin and Marshall College)
God Does Not Necessarily Respond to Prayer: David Basinger (Roberts Wesleyan College)
Is Eternal Damnation Compatible with the Christian Concept of God?
Eternal Hell and the Christian Concept of God: Jerry Walls (Asbury Theological Seminary)
No Hell: Thomas Talbott (Willamette University)
Is Morality Based on Godʼs Commands?
Divine Commands Are the Foundation of Morality: Janine Marie Idziak (Loras College)
Ethics Is Based on Natural Law: Craig A. Boyd (Greenville College) and Raymond J. VanArragon (Asbury College)
Should a Christian Be a Mind-Body Dualist?
Christians Should Affirm Mind-Body Dualism: Dean W. Zimmerman (Rutgers University)
Christians Should Reject Mind-Body Dualism: Lynne Rudder Baker (University of Massachusetts)

In a letter to Philosophy Now magazine (Issue 47, August/September 2004, p. 22) Flew noted that “It has become inordinately difficult even to begin to think about constructing a naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first reproducing organism.” Flew then recommends two books: “The first book is Roy Abraham Vargheseʼs “The Wonderful World: A Journey from Modern Science to the Mind of God” (Fountain Hills, Arizona: Tyr Publishing, 2003). The second book is Gerald L. Schroederʼs The Hidden Face of God: Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth (Touchstone, New York 2001).”

“Gerald Schroederʼs” name also came up in Flewʼs interview with Habermas in which Flew said: “I am open to [the notion of theistic revelation], but not enthusiastic about potential revelation from God. On the positive side, for example, I am very much impressed with physicist Gerald Schroederʼs comments on Genesis 1. That this biblical account might be scientifically accurate raises the possibility that it is revelation.” (Original Source: La Mirada, Calif., Dec. 9/PRNewswire)

Questioning Flewʼs Praise of the Works of “Gerald Schroeder”

Schroederʼs attempts to discover direct concordances between Genesis and modern science are far from satisfactory in the view of many of his fellow scientists, so I hope Flew will look into such matters a bit deeper. For instance, Schroederʼs claim about how much genetic change it would take to create human beings is wrong. According to the latest data, “The difference between human and chimp genomes is only about 1.23%, rather than 1.4% as originally thought.”

Even more importantly, if man and chimp diverged from a common ancestor, you must half those differences yet again. In fact the differences between human and chimp genomes are less than that between the genomes of near identical sibling species of fruit flies. And there is even evidence in human chromosome #2 that points to it being the result of a fusion of two chromosomes that very closely resemble two chromosomes found in the chimpanzees, whose banding patterns line up band for band to those inside human chromosome #2. Moreover, human chromosome #2 still contains remnants of that fusion process—in the form of a faint second centromere (there is almost always just one centromere per chromosome, found in its middle, not two centromeres), and reversed teleomeric sequences in the middle of that chromosome (telomeres are almost always found at the tips of chromosomes, not in the middle, and not in reverse order, hence finding them in the middle of a chromosome means that portion used to be the tip or end of a second chromosome).

Here are some reviews of Schroederʼs books that perhaps Flew might like to acquaint himself with before lending any more praises to Schroederʼs work: Frank Sonleitner,Department of Zoology, University of Oklahoma, Norman OK 73019 reviews Schroederʼs The Science of God:

Source: www.ncseweb.org/

“This book is essentially an elaboration and update of Schroederʼs earlier book Genesis and the Big Bang published in 1990. Schroeder is an Israeli physicist who has also extensively studied biblical interpretation. He uses the arguments of the Anthropic principle (the Big Bang and the fine-tuning of the universal constants) as evidence for God; but he also insists that the Bible and science agree. Genesis is not to be taken literally nor dismissed as poetry but must be interpreted correctly following the lead of talmudic scholars such as Nahmanides and Maimonides. Although his interpretation twists, stretches, and sometimes directly contradicts the literal meaning of Genesis, it confirms all the findings of modern cosmology and geology.

“Using a universal time clock based on the stretching of the wavelengths of light as the universe expands, he concludes that the universe is 15.75 billion years old. The six days of Genesis consist of a nonlinear day-age description of the history; day 1 covers the first 8 billion years, and day 6 only the last 1/4 billion.

“Schroeder accepts the standard geologic and paleontologic history of the earth but he balks at evolution (although he admits some sort of genetic continuity as suggested by the evidence of comparative anatomy, biochemistry and embryonic recapitulation). He rejects all transitional forms among higher categories such as classes and phyla, but later admits that there might be transitional forms within classes. (He does discuss the recently discovered intermediate forms of whales.)

“Schroeder rejects evolution because he considers its mechanism to rest solely on pure chance. There is no discussion of natural selection; it doesnʼt appear in the index although the term is used in passing while discussing Dawkins. His “proof” that it is impossible for convergent evolution to produce similar eyes in taxa which did not inherit these structures from a common ancestor uses a mathematical calculation based on two assumptions - (1) evolution is pure chance; and (2) the taxa have no genes in common except those “inherited” from the protozoa. Yet in other places he seems to be aware of the recent evidence that the phyla have many genes in common; he discusses the Hox genes that determine body plans and the Pax genes that are involved in eye formation!

“Schroeder admits that there were “pre-Adamites” (Cro-Magnon and Neanderthals) living for 40 000 years prior to Adam, but questions the existence of earlier hominid species because of the fragmentary nature of their fossils. Again he uses a mathematical model to show that the evolution of humans from an ape ancestor is impossible. This model also assumes that (1) evolution would occur by pure chance and (2) one million mutations would be necessary to produce the ape-human transition! “It takes more than the Big Bang and the fine tuning of universal constants to demonstrate that the creator is the kind, loving, personal God worshipped by Christians. And there Schroederʼs arguments fall apart. For example, he argues that quantum mechanics provides the basis of free will and that the determinacy of our genes does not prevent our exercising free will, yet later he says that randomness in nature (including random mutations) is necessary for free will! And natural disasters are necessary. We must suffer earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that result from plate tectonics made possible by the earthʼs molten core because the latter is necessary to generate a magnetic field to protect us from the high energy radiation produced by the life-giving sun. But then he says that the biblical Creator could have made stars that didnʼt produce those lethal rays but “they would not be natural” and would offer absolute testimony of the Creatorʼs existence! And still later he contradicts this principle (that the universe is organized “naturally” to hide the existence of the Creator) by saying that the earth is at an “unnatural” distance from the sun and hints that this may be miraculous! (According to Schroeder some exponential law determines the distance of the planets, and the earthʼs distance does not fit the pattern.)

“Evolutionists will justifiably criticize Schroeder for his simplistic and inconsistent treatment of evolution while the real creationists will reject him for his theology which includes rejection of the literal reading of Genesis, acceptance of the Big Bang, an old age for the earth, existence of pre-Adamites, a local flood, and ignoring Christ, Christianity and the New Testament.”

Victor J. Stenger, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Hawaii. Review of Schroederʼs The Science of God:

“How can both the Bible and science be right? Israeli physicist Gerald Schroeder says he can show us how. Letʼs start with cosmology. The Bible says God created the universe in six days and indicates the passage of only about 6,000 years since then. Science currently estimates the visible universe to be about 13 billion years old, give or take a few billion. Schroeder reconciles the two, explaining that the six days of the Bible refer to a different measure of time. He explains: “there is no possible way for those first six days to have an Earth-based perspective simply because for the first two of those six days there was no Earth” (51). “Instead, time during this six day period was measured on a cosmic clock. And what else could be used for that clock but the vibrations of light (electromagnetic waves)? Today the light from creation appears as the cosmic microwave background. This is now redshifted by a factor of a trillion (1012) from the period of “quark confinement” when matter as we know it first began to form. Thus the cosmic clock at that epoch ran off a trillion days for each of our modern days. The six cosmic days of creation thus took about 15 billion years earth time, give or take a few billion. So, according to the author, Genesis is not only consistent with cosmology, it gives the correct age of the universe!

“Each of the six days in Schroederʼs Genesis actually takes a different length of earth time. The duration D, in earth days, of each cosmic day t is calculated from the formula D = (Ao/L)exp(-Lt), where Ao = 4x1012 (the ratio of the frequencies of the cosmic microwave background at quark confinement compared to now) and L = 0.693 (natural log of 2). More simply, cosmic day one is 8 billion earth years long and you divide by two to get the duration of each succeeding cosmic day. “Cosmic day one starts 15.75 billion earth years ago and covers the creation of the universe, the “breaking free” of light as electrons bind to atomic nuclei, and the beginning of galaxy formation. This is described in Gen. 1:1-5 as the creation followed by light separating from the darkness.

“Cosmic day two starts 7.75 billion earth years ago and lasts four billion earth years. During this period the stars and galaxies are born. This corresponds to Gen. 1:6-8, the formation of the heavenly firmament. “Cosmic day three starts 3.75 billion earth years ago. During two billion earth years, the earth cools, water appears, and the first life forms appear. In Gen. 1:9-13, vegetation first appears during the third day. “Cosmic day four starts 1.75 billion earth years ago and lasts a billion earth years. The earthʼs atmosphere becomes transparent and photosynthesis produces an oxygen-rich atmosphere. Schroeder says that this corresponds to Gen. 1:14-19 when “the Sun, Moon, and stars become visible in the heavens” (67).

“Cosmic day five starts 750 million earth years ago and lasts 500 million earth years. During this period, the first multicellular animals appear and the oceans swarm with life. Gen. 1:20-23 says the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures and “birds fly above the earth” (94). “Cosmic day six starts 250 million years ago and ends at the time of Adam. During this period we have a massive extinction in which 90 percent of life is destroyed and then repopulated with humanoids and humans. This, Schroeder says, corresponds to what is described in Gen. 1:24-31. “Technically, Schroederʼs formula gives the present as the end of the sixth day. However, it could just as well have ended a few thousand years ago and not affect the rest of the calculation where things are rounded off at hundreds of millions of years. Schroeder argues that after the six cosmic days of creation, Genesis switches its focus over to humanity and starts measuring time in human terms. The rest of the Bible concerns itself with the 6,000 earth years since Adam and Eve, estimated from the Bible in Bishop Ussher fashion.

“Schroeder does not deny the existence of hominid creatures before Adam. He talks about Neanderthals and Cro-Magnons, and accepts that they had developed tools, pottery, and many human-like qualities. In Lev. 11:33 the Bible talks about pottery. But, Schroeder argues that since it never mentions the invention of pottery, that event must have pre-dated Adam (130).

“According to the author, the Bible has no interest in these pre-Adam hominids because they were not yet fully human and had no souls. Thus they are never mentioned. Adam represents the quantitative change to a large brain, but more important, the qualitative change that makes us different from all other forms of life: “our soul of human spirituality” (133). God breathed this into Adam, the first real human, 6,000 years ago. “Schroederʼs attempt to connect 31 lines of Genesis to big-bang cosmology and earth paleontology makes entertaining reading, but will convince no one who is not already convinced or totally lacking of critical facilities.

“Let us return to the beginning. Schroederʼs use of quark confinement as the defining moment for his cosmic time scale is completely arbitrary. He seems to have chosen it for no better reason than it gives the answer he wants. The redshift from quark confinement to the present is of the order of 1012. Multiplying this by six days gives 15 billion years, which is consistent with our current estimate for the age of the universe. “Alternatively, Schroeder might have chosen the moment in the early universe called “decoupling,” which represents the point where radiation separates from matter. Indeed, he relates this event to the separation of the “light from the darkness” described in Genesis day one. But the redshift from decoupling to the present is only of the order of 1,000, which would give an earth time interval of only fifteen years for the six cosmic days of creation. If he had chosen some other moment, he would have obtained yet a different time scale.

“Furthermore, by Schroederʼs own formula the universe creation corresponds to the time of quark confinement. Blueshifting back from that point rather than redshifting ahead, the events prior to quark confinement would recede infinitely into the past, in earth time, and we would have no creation at all.

“Schroederʼs use of an exponential function to give different earth periods for each cosmic day is not justified by his argument that earth time is simply redshifted cosmic time. While an exponential relationship would apply for the inflationary epoch in the early universe, that has ended by the time of quark confinement. Afterwards we have the almost linear Hubble expansion in which the redshift varies as a power law with time, not exponentially. By having each cosmic day half as long as the preceding one in earth years, again a completely arbitrary, unjustified procedure, Schroeder is able to vaguely relate events known from cosmology to those described in Genesis.

“In cosmic day two the “firmament” is created. Note that Schroeder excludes from the “firmament” all galaxies more than 7.75 billion light years away, of which there are many. Furthermore, he sees no problem with calling the expanding universe a “firmament.” Like all apologists, he selects his data carefully, accepting only those which agree with his hypotheses and discarding those which do not.

“Primitive life first appears in cosmic day three. Here again it takes some mighty stretching to associate what is described in the Bible for the third day, including fruit trees, with the primitive life described by paleontology for that epoch.

“Schroeder has the sun, moon, and stars becoming visible in cosmic day four. In fact, Genesis seems to say the that sun, moon, and stars are created at that time - well after the earth was created.

“Cosmic day five has the waters teeming with life. But the biblical verses imply birds as well. Schroeder says that “birds” is a mistranslation and that the Bible here is referring to water insects instead. Translation is so easy when you know what you want a passage to say.

“Cosmic day six contains the mass extinctions of life that occurred 65 million years ago. The biblical verses referenced make no mention of mass extinction. The Biblical Flood occurs well after Adam, but Schroeder needs to end the six days of creation with Adam for other purposes. This is one event he simply cannot make fit, although he is not honest enough to say so and leaves the impression that everything is consistent.

“At times you get the impression that this book is a parody, with quite a few good chuckles when read in that context. However, the sections on evolution soon convince you that no parody is intended. They are just too unfunny, too dull. Schroeder trots out all the old, tiresome arguments about why “life could not have stared by chance” and how the simplest forms, even viruses, are “far too complex to have originated without there being an inherent chemical property of molecular self-organization and/or reaction enhancing catalysts at every step of their development” (85). He applies the usual creationist deception of calculating chance probabilities as if chance is the only operative mechanism, and then saying this “proves” that God intervenes along the way when they come out very low. And, of course, the “staccato aspect of the fossil record” refutes classical evolution. “These rapid changes cannot be explained by purely random mutations at the molecular-genetic level” (87).

“Notice how often theists tell us that something cannot be explained except by God? They never seem to learn from history.”

Revised Title: The Delusions of Gerald Schroeder, December 5, 1997

A young-earth creationist Amazon reviewer of The Science of God:

“I find many of his interpretations manipulated to his own cause, e.g. Gen. 1:12 which he interprets: “and the earth brought forth life.” A more reliable interpretation of the text renders: “and the earth(or land) brought forth vegetation.” Further, he cites no credible Hebrew scholar who agrees with his interpretation of day for order and night for chaos. He relies much more for his case on the mystical kabbalah, especially Nahmanides, which can only be explained at best as “opinion.” This leaves him in positions which do not square with all of inspired Scripture…For the exact opposite view of Schroederʼs key thesis: clocks ticking faster at the center and slow at the edge of the cosmos—- see young-earth creationist, D. Russell Humphreysʼs book “Starlight and Time.”

Old earth creationist Hugh Ross reviews Schroederʼs Genesis And The Big Bang:

Source: www.reasons.org/resources/apologetics/p9401.html?main

“One problem with his view is that it clashes with the scientific data on the timing of Earthʼs origin. Since the earth already exists on the first creation day of Genesis 1, Schroederʼs model would say that Earth began at least 12 billion years ago. Scientific measurements, however, show that it is only 4.6 billion years old. Our view is that Genesis 1:2 establishes the frame of reference for the creation events: “The Spirit of God was brooding (or hovering) over the surface of the waters.” In other words, Godʼs time and space frame in describing creation is the earthʼs surface, a frame in common with all readers of the account. The text gives no hint of Schroederʼs relativistically time-extended creation days. If one seeks Jewish support for a day-age interpretation of Genesis 1, Nathan Aviezer, another Jewish physicist, offers it in a book entitled In the Beginning: Biblical Creation and Science (Hoboken, NJ: KTAV Publishing House, 1990). Aviezer acknowledges that the six creation days of Genesis 1 must refer to long time periods.”

Amazon Reviewer of The Science of God: seapapa from Los Angeles “Schroederʼs thesis is that the author of Genesis is describing a 15 billion year history of the universe and life, even though that was never his understanding or his intention. The true meaning Genesis 1 went undetected until it was discovered by the cabalist author Nahmanides in the 11th Century AD. It was lost again until Schroeder rediscovered it. “Even accepting the dubious proposition that people can write things that actually mean the exact opposite of what they intend, the match between the Genesis timeline and the scientifically proposed history of the universe makes an ill fit. Schroeder tries to reconcile the two by focusing minutely on certain words in Genesis that could be interepreted to allow for longer time periods, while totally ignoring the text read in its entirety. For example, day three of creation supposedly lasts 1.6-3.6 billion years ago. Genesis said “let the land produce vegetation”. Success, proclaims Schroder, that matches the plant life on the planet, which is found only in the… water! He conveniently ignores the rest of the verse which calls for fruit-bearing trees and seed-bearing plants. There was nothing but protozoa and plankton back then. This is typical of the book.

“The most absurd argument is that, if properly interpreted, the 6 creation days correspond to 6 actual 24 hour days on earth AND 15 billion cosmic years. How so? Einsteinʼs relativity of time! Schroeder makes such an effort to preserve the 6 days of creation and the order of creation. “This book is ultimately a polemic. Although brilliant and articulate, one gets the feeling that Schroeder cannot bear to have Genesis undermined. That compromizes his scientific judgement.”

A Reviewer of The Science of God (at amazon.com):

“contains a few good passages, but also some egregious errors, which are puzzling when made by a PhD in Physics. For example, G. Schroeder completely misinterprets the experiments with particles moving through openings, invents some odd concept of heat diluting in enlarged volumes, misrepresents the story of photoelectric effect, etc. One striking feature of this book is that Schroeder suggests in it the chronological data , which completely contradict his own data on the same subject, given in his first book, without a word of explanation why he changed those data. A useless book.”

A Reviewer of The Science of God (at amazon.com) wrote:

“His time dilation calculations are totally at fault. The factor of one million million he uses is totally arbitery (nothing really special happened at z=1 million million). His redshift/blueshift calculations are also wrong: The background temperature (and the redshift) changed by less than 10% in the last billion years. Nowhere near the rate needed to slow down from a 500 million year per day (Day 5, according to Schreoder) to 24 hours per day. “Another serious mistake appears in his coverage of evolution: He says the the evolution from chimpanzees to humans requires a million point mutations because the difference in the active DNA between human and chimps is 1,000,000 bases.

“This is simply false. Schroeder himself says that the number of changes needed is no more than 70,000. In most cases a single point mutation is enough to complete a change.

“It would have been better if Schreoder, as a nuclear physicist, asked an expert biologist before writing his chapters about evolution…”

Reviewer: gsssew@m… from St. Louis, Missouri

I was intrigued by the title, but agitated by the contents. The entire book is filled with completely preposterous assumptions and conclusions. After reading such a book, I begin to question why someone, such as Gerald Schroeder, view themselves as scientists.

Denis: Ed, If Jerry Falwell became an evolutionist, be assured, that would be news.

Edward: Flew hasnʼt become a creationist, nor even a “life everlasting”-ist. His god is like Spinozaʼs and Einsteinʼs. So, what I meant to say was that the media played up Flewʼs change of mind (even some Christians on the web bragging he was close to converting to Christianity and holding up his example as a sort of sacred talisman against further thought concerning their particular beliefs.)

Denis: Itʼs news because of who Flew is and what he has written.

Edward: I doubted Flewʼs competency in his first debate with Habermas, published as, “Did Jesus Rise From the Dead?” because Flew demonstrated in that debate that he knew much about Hume but nearly nothing about the relevant Gospel passages. I subsequently wrote Habermas to point out Flewʼs inadequacies and got into a little letter debate with Habby that he even presented to a Christian publisher, who, however, wasnʼt interested in publishing such an exchange.

Flew himself admitted recently that he lacks competency when it comes to judging physics and biology arguments:

Flew Update (January 2005) by Richard Carrier who exchanged letters with Flew

Flew admits: “I have been mistaught by Gerald Schroeder.” He says “it was precisely because he appeared to be so well qualified as a physicist (which I am not) that I was never inclined to question what he said about physics.” Apart from his unreasonable plan of trusting a physicist on the subject of biochemistry (after all, the relevant field is biochemistry, not physics—yet it would seem Flew does not recognize the difference), this attitude seems to pervade Flewʼs method of truthseeking, of looking to a single author for authoritative information and never checking their claims (or, as in the case of Dawkins, presumed lack of claims). As Flew admitted to me, and to Stuart Wavell of the London Times, and Duncan Crary of the Humanist Network News, he has not made any effort to check up on the current state of things in any relevant field (see “No Longer Atheist, Flew Stands by ‘Presumption of Atheism’” and “In the Beginning There Was Something”). Flew has thus abandoned the very standards of inquiry that led the rest of us to atheism.

Despite all this, Flew has not retracted his belief in God, as far as I can tell. But in response to theists citing him in their favor, Flew strangely calls his “recent very modest defection from my previous unbelief” a “more radical form of unbelief,” and implies that the concept of God might actually be self-refuting, for “surely there is material here for a new and more fundamental challenge to the very conception of God as an omnipotent spirit,” but, Flew says, “I am just too old at the age of nearly 82 to initiate and conduct a major and super radical controversy about the conceivability of the putative concept of God as a spirit.” This would appear to be his excuse for everything: he wonʼt investigate the evidence because itʼs too hard. Yet he will declare beliefs in the absence of proper inquiry. Theists would do well to drop the example of Flew. Because his willfully sloppy scholarship can only help to make belief look ridiculous.

How Believers Believe, Why Doubters Continue to Question

Believers minds are webs of “interconnected” information that all point toward the truth of every other thing they believe, whether hypothetical or historical, whether seen or unseen, concerning this world or the next. There are no sliding scales of probabilities concerning any of their beliefs in particular. Instead, everything is “related” to everything else, and “proves” it.

Doubters have no way to “crack open” such a tightly sealed circular bubble or egg of “reasoning.” That is also why believers insist, “Accept it all, accept my holy book and my interpretation, my church, and my views of the seen and unseen worlds, or skip heaven and suffer eternally.”

To put it another way, a believer asserts the Bible is holy, infallible, inerrant or perfect, and a particular interpretation of it by his church is equally so, and the interpretation coincides with an unseen reality, say the Trinity, which they insist exists.

But a doubter looks at the plausibility of claims piled on claims, beginning with the claim of a holy or infallible book, continuing with the claim of a particular church's holy or infallible interpretation of that book, and ending with claims of knowing the final unseen reality. The doubter points out how the unknowns and/or the improbabilities continue to rise along the way.

Let's consider a particular case, “The Trinity.” Believers begin with a book like the Bible and assert it is holy, infallible or inerrant. Next they assert that a particular interpretation of that book is likewise, holy, infallible or inerrant, and they find the “Trinity” in that book by emphasizing particular verses and interpretations of those verses, and downplaying questions raised by other verses. For instance, the Jews wrote and possessed over half the Bible for centuries yet never came to believe in the Trinity, but instead came to believe and stress that “the Lord our God is one God.” Trinitarian Christians (there are non-Trinitarian Christians by the way) claim that God let them know the “truth” about “the Trinity” in the “New Testament,” while the Jews only had part of the “truth” in the “Old Testament.” The doubter wonders whether God neglected to tell the Jews the “truth,” and if so, why, and if the answer to that question is not also unproven or doubtful. The doubter also wonders whether some human beings merely invented newer interpretations and newer religious ideas over time. Even in the N.T. the books do not agree as to what Jesus's connection with God or divinity is, because the earliest three Gospels, which are presumably our earliest preserved stories about Jesus, don't directly promote the idea that Jesus was “God,” and it remains unclear exactly what the historical Jesus himself believed, since even those earliest three Gospels are partisan documents and contain later interpretations of Jesus. James D. G. Dunn a moderate evangelical, agrees with many mainstream scholars that it is doubtful that the historical Jesus considered himself to be the Messiah, and that none of the teachings of sayings of Jesus in the fourth Gospel are historic.

There is an old story of a missionary trying to convert an Indian. The Indian made a little circle in the sand and said, “That is what the Indian knows.” Then he made another circle a little larger and said, “That is what missionary knows, but outside there the Indian knows just as much as missionary.”
—Robert Ingersoll

Anthony Flew's Conversion

Why is Antony Flewʼs “Conversion to Deism” News, but the testimonies of scholars (and entire seminaries) that left behind formerly conservative Bible beliefs, not news?

by Edward T. Babinski

The media has been making a hubbub about philosophy professor Antony Flewʼs “conversion from atheism to Deism.” However the media has ignored the testimonies of many scholars who during their college careers moved away from formerly held conservative religious beliefs, even though the latter has been known to occur with regularity, which is why conservative Bible believers fear sending their children to most institutions of higher learning, preferring a “Bible college.” However, even sending oneʼs children to “Bible schools” their entire lives is no guarantee they will resist the pull of higher learning and the increasing doubts that entails. The bravest “Bible believing” children with a deep interest in theology and history are often not content to simply preach to the choir at their own “Bible college,” but also seek to obtain higher degrees at the most prestigious institutions outside the fold, because their curiosity is wider than that of most, and they also seek the most direct contact with the best and brightest “non-believers” to listen to what they have to say, and also perhaps to seek to play a role in trying to convert their professors back to “Bible belief” as they understand it. However, what often happens in such cases is the opposite—the views of the formerly conservative Christian student grow more moderate or even liberal, sometimes even atheistic.

In the book I edited, Leaving the Fold: Testimonies of Former Fundamentalists (Prometheus Books, 2003, paperback) there are over three dozen first-hand testimonies of people who left fundamentalist Christianity for either more moderate or more liberal pastures, including a few who left Christianity for non-Christian spiritualities, became agnostics, or even atheists. Some of them left the conservative fold during their pursuit of higher education, though they began their scholarly careers at conservative Bible believing institutions. And not just Bible believing individuals, but entire Bible believing institutions grow more moderate over time with such regularity that all of the most conservative Christian universities were founded in recent times. Over time even the most conservative Christian universities continue to grow more moderate, more liberal. Calvinʼs college that he founded in Geneva was being run by devil-denying Deists two hundred years after he had founded it. Harvard was founded as a conservative Bible believing seminary, and then Yale had to be founded due to the growing “theological excesses” of Harvard. Machen left Princeton Theological Seminary to found Westminster Theological Seminary in 1929 in reaction to Princetonʼs hiring “modernist” professors during the “fundamentalist-modernist” controversy of the early 1900s—a major controversy that split many denominations in America. But today even some sterling graduates of Machenʼs Westminster Theological Seminary like Paul Seely, whose articles are published in Westminster Theological Seminary Review, argues that the Bible spoke of the earth as flat; the tower of Babel story was a myth; and the earth is just as old as modern geologists have concluded. Wheaton College (Billy Grahamʼs alma mater) no longer demands that all of its professors agree that Adam and Eveʼs bodies were created directly from the earth. And Dallas Theological Seminary even has a graduate student whose thesis is that the numbers of the Hebrews who escaped Egypt, as given in the Bible in several places, must be appreciably downsized. Furman University, which was founded by a former president of the South Carolina Southern Baptist Convention, obtained the right to choose its own board members rather than having the Southern Baptist Convention have the last word, and is today a self-governing liberal arts institution.

In conclusion, if the lone conversion of one philosophy professor merely to “Deism” (still far from “Bible Belief” and further still from “inerrancy”) is the greatest “victory” that religious conservatives can muster, it would seem that the Religious Rightʼs campaign to change the minds of the most well educated people in the nation is one of the most absolute and utter failures in human history. The new TV show on the PAX network, “Faith Under Fire,” hosted by Lee Strobel and his Bible inerrantist friends is another such failure. Is he hoping that the intellectuals and scholars he interviews are going to break down on national TV merely after being pummeled by “proof texts” from the Bible? Does Strobel imagine that the inerrantist scholars from various “Bible Colleges” whom he and his producers pick to defend conservative “Bible belief” have studied matters more deeply than the vast army of moderate and liberal scholars around the world? Does he imagine that there truly is no intellectual room for doubting an inerrantist approach toward the Bible? Maybe Strobel will one day obtain enough knowledge of the Bible and its history to begin to recognize where all the doubts lay. The alternative of course is for Strobel to found his own new young “inerrantist Bible believing” institution of learning (theyʼre all young institutions and are born out of the realization that the vast majority of attempts to convert the most intelligent people at long-lived institutions—where the brightest and the best knock elbows—are consistent failures). Though of course in a couple hundred years I bet even Strobelʼs institution would have grown more moderate. I donʼt even need to claim to be an inerrant supernatural prophet to make such a prediction either.
The End

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Former conservative born again Christian, Bill Rowe (William L. Rowe), now a well published and kindly atheist professor

Purdue philosophy professor a gentle atheist

In a nation in which 80 to 90 percent of adults say they believe in God, the label “atheist” rarely lands quietly in a conversation.

Say it, and many folks picture some joyless, nasty-tempered misfit who spends his days filing lawsuits against public displays of crosses and menorahs.

What to do then with the gentle, civilized, dog-loving human being that is Bill Rowe?

“Iʼve always been soft about religion in spite of my…” Rowe searched for the perfect word then just smiled. “Thatʼs why I say Iʼm a friendly atheist.”

No one who knows him begs to differ, especially Roweʼs theistic colleagues in the Department of Philosophy at Purdue University, from which he soon will retire. Nor would disagreement come from thousands of philosophy of religion students (I among them) whom Rowe has taught during his 43-year career in West Lafayette.

The author of five books and editor of two more, Rowe will be honored this weekend during a three-day conference at Purdue on the “Problem of Evil.” He and his philosophy colleagues will address the thorny issue of reconciling the existence of an all-powerful, all-loving supreme being with the unrelenting existence of evil and suffering in the world.

“Iʼm just going to give a brief paper trying—once again—expressing this view that the evils in the world count against the existence of God,” Rowe said during an interview in his seventh-floor, Beering Hall office.

“Thatʼs an old argument of mine, and there are some really good criticisms of it that I need to take into account. But Iʼve got some ways of supplementing the argument that I hope will shore it up—at least in the eyes of the faithful.”

If any of that sounds simplistic—We believe in God or donʼt, right?—it isnʼt. As F. Scott Fitzgerald said about the very rich, philosophers are different from you and me. Nothing about their thought processes is a simple stroll from Point A to Point B.

When philosophers “argue” about the existence of anything, especially God, it doesnʼt look like a dinner table fight or a “Crossfire” exchange. There is no yelling or brandishing of Bibles. Often there isnʼt any speech at all because philosophers argue on paper a lot more than in person. Rowe himself is the author of nearly 100 major papers, book chapters, encyclopedia or dictionary entries and reviews. The titles of his papers range from the very big picture—“God and Evil” and “Death and Transcendence”—to the super-specific—“The Fatalism of ‘Diordorus Cronus’” and “Evil and the Theistic Hypothesis: A Response to Wykstra.” In a similar vein, it would be a mistake to assume that Roweʼs arguments for the non-existence of God are the product of an unexamined spiritual path.

Schooled as a boy on Sundays in a variety of Protestant denominations, Rowe experienced an Evangelical conversion in a Baptist church when he was a teenager. For college, he chose the Detroit Bible Institute, with plans to enter Christian ministry.

He transferred after his second year to Wayne State University because his favorite teacher at Detroit was dismissed from the faculty for something called “ultra-dispensationalism.” (Space prohibits even a cursory definition of the term here but, trust me, it isnʼt remotely connected to a disbelief in God.)

At Wayne State, Rowe took philosophy courses to better study theology. One professor, an atheist from whom he was “oceans apart” on religion, emerged as an intellectual mentor, friend and, eventually, catalyst for change. Roweʼs first choice for graduate school, the conservative Fuller Theological Seminary, could not offer him financial aid, so he settled for a three-year fellowship at the University of Chicago Theological Seminary. The intellectual atmosphere was different from anything heʼd experienced. “It was a seminary that wasnʼt fundamentalist and was very liberal in its thinking,” he said. “So, there, I came to get a kind of critical approach to the Bible, learn something about its origins and also came in contact with theologians that were far distant from fundamentalism. The start of my third year, I could feel inside of me my fundamentalism beginning to crumble and disappear.”

How frightening was that?

“It was scary,” Rowe said. “I sat up late at night wondering what would become of me. I started to read Dostoevsky novels. I didnʼt fall apart, but I was concerned about what I sensed were changes occurring in me that I didnʼt really have full control over.”

Rowe soldiered on, received his divinity degree (summa cum laude) and figured he would continue at Chicago for a doctorate in religion. But his professor pal at Wayne State urged him to pursue his obvious gift for philosophy at the University of Michigan. Rowe changed cities and life courses.

During his first teaching stint at the University of Illinois, Rowe attended a theology lecture series and met Calvin Schrag, who was on his way to becoming one of the two pillars of Purdueʼs young philosophy department: When Rowe moved his wife and children to West Lafayette in 1962 to teach philosophy of religion, the second pillar was in place. Last autumn in Philosophy Now magazine, Rowe said his unlikely route to atheism was a gradual and very personal process, not the result of philosophical or scientific arguments contradictory of his theistic beliefs.

Studying the factual origins of the Bible had made him skeptical of its divine authenticity, but the truly compelling factor “was the lack of experiences and evidence sufficient to sustain my religious life and my religious convictions.”

“I knew that it was wrong and arrogant to ask for some special sign from God. But I longed for a sense of Godʼs presence in my life,” Rowe told interviewer Nick Trakakis. “And although I spent hours in prayer and thirsted after some dim assurance that God was present, I never had any such experience.”

“I tried to be a better person and to follow whatever I could glean from the Bible as a life service to God. But in the end, I had no more sense of the presence of God than I had before my conversion experience. So, it was the absence of religious experiences of the appropriate kind that, as I would put it now, left me free to seriously explore the grounds for disbelief.”

During our discussion in his office, Rowe described the longing for a sense of Godʼs presence in the life of another theologian and philosopher, the 11th-century archbishop of Canterbury, St. Anselm. Like Rowe, Anselm was a gifted and lucid writer.

In a nutshell (which is the worst place to put any philosophical premise but all that a daily newspaper has), Anselmʼs famed ontological argument for Godʼs existence goes like this:
God exists because the very idea of a greatest possible being — what the saint called “that than which nothing greater can be thought” — exists, even in the mind of a disbelieving fool.

“Itʼs a very powerful argument,” said Rowe. “Anselm precedes that argument, however, with a kind of lament. Here he is, a Christian saint in charge of monks, and they respect him, love him, and yet his lament is that heʼs never seen God. Heʼs never had what he would be able to say is a personal experience of God himself. And thatʼs remarkable.

“In its place he has to put this argument, a wonderful argument, and itʼs not easy to tear it apart. But itʼs a long way away from a direct personal experience of God.”

Opening his studentsʼ minds to Anselmʼs argument, to the arguments against Anselmʼs argument and to scores of other arguments from centuries of great religion philosophers, is something Rowe has enjoyed since Eisenhower was in the White House. As much as he looks forward to retirement in June, he seems about as burned out on teaching as Warren Buffett is on making money. The predominance of Evangelical religions in America, he said, tends to produce high-school graduates unfamiliar with critical thinking about religion.

“So when they come to university and take a course in philosophy of religion, itʼs a new experience for them to first even realize that there are important arguments, philosophical arguments for the existence of God and to see that what theyʼve accepted on faith can have some basis in reason,” he said.

Likewise, it is a new experience for students to learn in the very same class that “there are not insignificant reasons to think perhaps God doesnʼt exist.”

After he retires, Rowe will continue reading and writing about lifeʼs Big Questions, travel with his wife, Margaret, who is Purdueʼs vice provost of academic affairs, and lavish affection on his 105-pound Labrador retriever, Cody.

“I love dogs,” Rowe said.

When I pointed out that “dog” is “god” spelled backward, Rowe laughed, more like a merry little boy than one of the most important philosophers in America. His delight made me think of a survey result Iʼd recently read: According to a poll by ChristianWebSite.com, 44 percent of U.S. adults believe that “good atheists” will make it into heaven.
Stephanie Salter can be reached at (812) 231-4229 or stephanie.salter@tribstar.com
Endnote: The Society of Christian Philosophers has published a debate book: Contemporary Debate in the Philosophy of Religion Section III. features debates between Christian/theistic philosophers on questions such as “Can Only One Religion Be True?” “Does God Take Risks in Governing the World?” “Does God Respond to Petitionary Prayer?” “Is Eternal Damnation Compatible with the Christian Concept of God?” “Is Morality Based on Godʼs Commands?” “Should a Christian Be a Mind-Body Dualist?” Concerning such questions, none of the Christian/theistic philosophers were convinced by the othersʼ arguments.

Additional First-Rate Scholarly Minds That Left Conservative Christianity Behind For More Moderate To Liberal Pastures

William G. Dever was the son of a fundamentalist preacher. After starting his education at a small Christian liberal arts college in Tennessee (Bob Jones Univ. presumably) he went to a Protestant theological seminary that exposed him to critical study of the Bible, a study that at first he resisted. In 1960 it was on to Harvard and a doctorate in Biblical theology. For thirty-five years he worked as an archaeologist, excavating in the Near East, and he is now professor of Near Eastern archaeology and anthropology at the University of Arizona. In his book, What Did the Bible Writers Know and When Did They Know It?, he writes, “While the Hebrew Bible in its present, heavily edited form cannot be taken at face value as history in the modern sense, it nevertheless contains much history.” He adds: “After a century of exhaustive investigation, all respectable archaeologists have given up hope of recovering any context that would make Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob credible ‘historical figures.’” He writes of archaeological investigations of Moses and the Exodus as having been “discarded as a fruitless pursuit.”

He says what really undercuts the biblical story of the Exodus is the lack of evidence to support what is called “the conquest theory,” that the Israelites took the land of Canaan by force. “There just isnʼt any evidence of widespread destructions of Canaanite cities at the end of the Bronze Age around 1200. And it now appears that most of the early Israelite villages that we have, some 300 or so, are in the central hill country, which had been sparsely occupied before. And these new sites are not established on the ruins of old Canaanite towns, but are established on bedrock or virgin soil. So most mainstream scholars and all archaeologists today would regard these hill country settlers, or Israelites probably, as coming from somewhere within Canaan itself.”

He is not saying that the Biblical Moses was entirely mythical, though he does admit that “.the overwhelming archaeological evidence today of largely indigenous origins for early Israel leaves no room for an exodus from Egypt or a 40-year pilgrimage through the Sinai wilderness. A Moses-like figure may have existed somewhere in southern Transjordan in the mid-late13th century B.C., where many scholars think the Biblical traditions concerning the god Yahweh arose. But archaeology can do nothing to confirm such a figure as a historical personage, much less prove that he was the founder of later Israelite region.”

About Leviticus and Numbers he writes that these are “clearly additions to the ‘pre-history’ by very late Priestly editorial hands, preoccupied with notions of ritual purity, themes of the ‘promised land,’ and other literary motifs that most modern readers will scarcely find edifying much less historical.” Dever writes that “the whole ‘Exodus-Conquest’ cycle of stories must now be set aside as largely mythical, but in the proper sense of the term ‘myth’: perhaps ‘historical fiction,’ but tales told primarily to validate religious beliefs.”

Deverʼs conclusions about what archaeology tells us about the Bible are not very pleasing to fundamentalists or conservative Evangelicals, and I gather that Dever and his colleagues of high standing likewise dismiss fundamentalists and hard-core conservative Evangelicals who want to consider themselves scholars without accepting that which good scholars must do: engage in extensive critical analysis. Those testifying for Deverʼs book (on the back cover) are: Paul D. Hanson, Professor of Divinity and Old Testament at Harvard University; David Noel Freedman, Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies at the University of Michigan; Philip M. King, Professor at Boston College and author of Jeremiah; William W. Hallo, Professor of Assyriology and Babylonian Literature at Yale University; and Bernhard W. Anderson, Professor of Old Testament, Boston University and Professor Emeritus at Princeton Theological Seminary. Like Dever, these are not a bunch of radical revisionists, but moderates in the field of Christian archeology.

Deverʼs latest book is, Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From? Conservative and fundamentalist Christians who interpret the Bible literally will gain no encouragement after reading it.

Bart D. Ehrman apparently started out as a conservative Christian, graduating magna cum laude with a B.A. from Wheaton College, Illinois (a major Evangelical Christian institution from which Billy Graham had also graduated) before attending Princeton Seminary and obtaining his doctorate. His highly successful introduction to the New Testament, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings (Oxford Univ. Press) is now in its third edition—“It approaches the New Testament from a consistently historical and comparative perspective, emphasizing the rich diversity of the earliest Christian literature. Rather than shying away from the critical problems presented by these books, Ehrman addresses the historical and literary challenges they pose and shows why scholars continue to argue over such significant issues as how the books of the New Testament came into being, what they mean, how they relate to contemporary Christian and non-Christian literature, and how they came to be collected into a canon of Scripture.” Dr. Ehrmanʼs University Lectures are also sold by The Teaching Company that features tapes and CDs.

ETB (April 7, 2005)