PDF Book: There is a God by Antony Flew

There is a God, by Antony Flew former top Atheist.

Antony Flew – There Is A God.pdfDownload

There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind is Antony Flew’s personal biographical account of his intellectual journey from the belief that there is no God to the belief that there is a God. The narrative is both fascinating and very readable. The purpose this review is to provide a brief synopsis and to highlight some of Flew’s reflections.

In part one, My Denial of the Divine, Flew talks about his atheism. In part two, My Discovery of the Divine, Flew talks about his reasons for believing that God exists. Flew puts in concisely in the introduction: “In brief, as the title says, I now believe there is a God!” (252-58)* The goal of his book is to chart his intellectual pilgrimage. He emphasizes the fact that this is strictly the result of considering the arguments and evidence. He says: “For the record, then, I want to lay to rest all those rumors that have me placing Pascalian bets.” (267-73)

Avecena proved: God exists without Design theory

Unthinkable: The Islamic thinker who ‘proved’ God exists without Design Theory. Avicenna deserves it, says Prof Peter Adamson.

How did Avicenna ‘prove’ God exists without the help of design theory?

“The full argument is a bit complicated for lay men, but here is a somewhat simplified version.

Avicenna’s proof actually has nothing to do with design, he doesn’t need the idea that the universe is intelligently put together. Instead, he argues from the idea that the things we see around us are ‘contingent’ or merely ‘possible’.

“The idea here is that a contingent thing is something that may either exist or not exist; its nature does not guarantee that it exists.

What Avicenna wants to do is show you that although all the things we experience directly are indeed contingent, there is also something else that exists necessarily, in other words, whose very nature guarantees that it exists.

“To do this, Avicenna points out that since a contingent thing on its own merit could either exist or not exist, it must have some external cause that made it exist – like ‘tipping the scales’ in favor of its existence rather than its non-existence.

“So take me, for instance. I am contingent, meaning that I am the sort of thing that could easily have failed to exist. In fact, at one time I didn’t yet exist, and in the future I will cease existing, that proves I’m not necessary.

“So there must have been a cause, maybe my parents, who brought me into existence.

Now Avicenna observes that the aggregate whole of all contingent things – in other words the physical universe – is also contingent. After all, everything in the universe is contingent, so taken all together as one thing, it too must be contingent. Thus it also needs an external cause, just like I do.

“Since that external cause has to be outside the whole aggregate of contingent things, it cannot itself be contingent.

So it is necessary. Hey presto, we’ve proven that there is a necessary existent which causes all other things! And this, of course, is God.”

How did this argument mark an advance on theological proofs in the Christian world?

“One thing I like about this proof is that it captures, in rigorous terms, a reason that I think actually underlies people’s belief in God.

Effectively, Avicenna is trying to show that when you look around and think, ‘All of this could have failed to exist; why is there something, rather than nothing?’ you are asking a good question.

“The answer to the question is that not everything can be contingent; that is, not everything could have failed to exist.

There must be something that just has to exist, to explain why everything else has wound up existing.

“This contrasts favourably to other medieval proofs, which turn on clever but unconvincing conceptual tricks like Anselm’s ontological argument, or do invoke the intelligent design of the universe, which many people nowadays think is a premise discredited by science.”

“God Exists?” – For The Freethinker

Now Benzmüller hopes that using such a headline-friendly example can help draw attention to the method.

“I didn’t know it would create such a huge public interest but (Gödel’s ontological proof) was definitely a better example than something inaccessible in mathematics or artificial intelligence,” the scientist added. “It’s a very small, crisp thing, because we are just dealing with six axioms in a little theorem. … There might be other things that use similar logic. Can we develop computer systems to check each single step and make sure they are now right?”

‘An Ambitious Expressive Logic’

The scientists, who have been working together since the beginning of the year, believe their work could have many practical applications in areas such as artificial intelligence and the verification of software and hardware.

Benzmüller also pointed out that there are many scientists working on similar subject areas. He himself was inspired to tackle the topic by a book entitled “Types, Tableaus and Gödel’s God,” by Melvin Fitting.
The use of computers to reduce the burden on mathematicians is not new, even if it is not welcomed by all in the field.

American mathematician Doron Zeilberger has been listing the name Shalosh B. Ekhad on his scientific papers since the 1980s. According to the New York-based Simons Foundation, the name is actually a pseudonym for the computers he uses to help prove theorems in seconds that previously required page after page of mathematical reasoning.

Zeilberger says he gave the computer a human-sounding name “to make a statement that computers should get credit where credit is due.” “human- centric bigotry” on the part of mathematicians, he says, has limited progress.

Ultimately, the formalization of Gödel’s ontological proof is unlikely to win over many atheists, nor is it likely to comfort true believers, who might argue the idea of a higher power is one that defies logic by definition.

For mathematicians looking for ways to break new ground, however, the news could represent an answer to their prayers!

END.
Source: abc.go.com

Two scientists have formalized a theorem regarding the existence of God penned by mathematician Kurt Gödel. But the God angle is somewhat of a red herring — the real step forward is the example it sets of how computers can make scientific progress simpler.

As headlines go, it’s certainly an eye-catching one. “Scientists Prove Existence of God,” German daily Die Welt wrote last week.

But unsurprisingly, there is a rather significant caveat to that claim. In fact, what the researchers in question say they have actually proven is a theorem put forward by renowned Austrian mathematician Kurt Gödel — and the real news isn’t about a Supreme Being, but rather what can now be achieved in scientific fields using superior technology.

When Gödel died in 1978, he left behind a tantalizing theory based on principles of modal logic — that a higher being must exist. The details of the mathematics involved in Gödel’s ontological proof are complicated, but in essence the Austrian was arguing that, by definition, God is that for which no greater can be conceived. And while God exists in the understanding of the concept, we could conceive of him as greater if he existed in reality. Therefore, he must exist.

Even at the time, the argument was not exactly a new one. For centuries, many have tried to use this kind of abstract reasoning to prove the possibility or necessity of the existence of God. But the mathematical model composed by Gödel proposed a proof of the idea. Its theorems and axioms — assumptions which cannot be proven — can be expressed as mathematical equations. And that means they can be proven.
Proving God’s Existence with a MacBook

That is where Christoph Benzmüller of Berlin’s Free University and his colleague, Bruno Woltzenlogel Paleo of the Technical University in Vienna, come in. Using an ordinary MacBook computer, they have shown that Gödel’s proof was correct — at least on a mathematical level — by way of higher modal logic. Their initial submission on the arXiv.org research article server is called “Formalization, Mechanization and Automation of Gödel’s Proof of God’s Existence.”
The fact that formalizing such complicated theorems can be left to computers opens up all kinds of possibilities, Benzmüller told SPIEGEL ONLINE. “It’s totally amazing that from this argument led by Gödel, all this stuff can be proven automatically in a few seconds or even less on a standard notebook,” he said.
The name Gödel may not mean much to some, but among scientists he enjoys a reputation similar to the likes of Albert Einstein — who was a close friend. Born in 1906 in what was then Austria-Hungary and is now the Czech city of Brno, Gödel later studied in Vienna before moving to the United States after World War II broke out to work at Princeton, where Einstein was also based. The first version of this ontological proof is from notes dated around 1941, but it was not until the early 1970s, when Gödel feared that he might die, that it first became public.

Contd…
Source. abcnews.com

If something comes into being, it must have been prompted by
something else. A book has an author. Music
has a music artist. A party has a party-thrower! All things that begin, that have a start, have a
cause to their beginning.
Consider the universe.

Scientists once held to the “steady-state” theory, that the universe has always existed without beginning.

Cosmological evidence now
refers to the “Big bang” as the point in time that the universe came into being. Our space-time-
matter-energy universe had a distinct and singular beginning.
Since it did not always exist, but came into existence (had a
singular beginning), then some other reality must have caused or
created it.

Everything we observe in nature
has a beginning. God however is in a different category, and must
be so. God is different from all nature and humanity and everything that exists, in that he
has always existed, independent from anything he created. God is not a dependent being, but self- sufficient, self-existent. And this
is how major religions describe God, and how God has revealed
himself to be. Why must God be this way?

Our universe cannot be explained any other way. It could not have created itself. It has not
always existed. And it could not be created by something that itself is created.

Why not?
It isn’t coherent to argue that the universe was created by God, but
God was in turn created by God to the second power, who was
in turn created by God to the third power, and so on.

Aristotle cogently argued, there
must be a reality that causes but is itself uncaused (or, a being
that moves but is itself unmoved) . Why? Because if there is an infinite regression of causes,
then by definition the whole process could never begin.

The laws of nature do not apply
only to earth. Our entire universe
follows the same laws. And these
laws never change.
Your coffee left on a counter will
always become cool. Gravity
remains steady, never random.
The speed of light remains
constant. The earth rotates in 24
hours. (This is so precise, we
know the year we need to add a
leap-second to our world clock,
to keep it current.)
Doesn’t it seem strange that our
universe is so orderly? Why is
that?
Cosmologist Sean Carroll
comments, “A law of physics is a
pattern that nature obeys
without exception.”1
Scientists today take for granted
the idea that the universe
operates according to laws. All of
science is based on what author
James Trefil calls the principle of
universality: “It says that the laws
of nature we discover here and
now in our laboratories are true
everywhere in the universe and
have been in force for all time.”2
There’s more. As scientists
record what they observe, most
often they are not just using
words and paragraphs. The laws
of nature can be documented
with numbers. They can be
measured and computed in the
language of mathematics.
The greatest scientists have been
struck by how strange this is.
There is no logical necessity for a
universe that obeys rules, let
alone one that abides by the
rules of mathematics. The speed
of light measures the same
186,000 miles per second, no
matter if the light comes from a
child’s flashlight or a star that’s
galaxies away. Mathematically,
there is an exact speed of light
that doesn’t change.
Physicist Eugene Wigner
confesses that the mathematical
underpinning of nature “is
something bordering on the
mysterious and there is no
rational explanation for it.”3
Richard Feynman, a Nobel Prize
winner for quantum
electrodynamics, said, “Why
nature is mathematical is a
mystery…The fact that there are
rules at all is a kind of miracle.”4
This astonishment springs from
the recognition that the universe
doesn’t have to behave this way.
It is easy to imagine a universe in
which conditions change
unpredictably from instant to
instant, or even a universe in
which things pop in and out of
existence. Instead, scientists cling
to their long-held faith in the
fundamental rationality of the
cosmos.
Physicist
Paul C.
Davies
comments,
“…to be a
scientist,
you had to
have faith
that the
universe is governed by
dependable, immutable, absolute,
universal, mathematical laws of
an unspecified origin. You’ve got
to believe that these laws won’t
fail, that we won’t wake up
tomorrow to find heat flowing
from cold to hot, or the speed of
light changing by the hour. Over
the years I have often asked my
physicist colleagues why the laws
of physics are what they
are? …The favorite reply is, ‘There
is no reason they are what they
are–they just are.'”5
Even over time, these laws
remain consistent. The same
laws of nature we find on earth
also govern a star billions of light
years away. A recent study
confirmed, “One of the most
important numbers in physics,
the proton-electron mass ratio, is
the same in a galaxy six billion
light years away as it is here on
Earth, according to new research,
laying to rest debate about
whether the laws of nature vary
in different places in the
Universe.”6
All of modern science rests in the
belief that rational laws, exist in
the universe. The main category
of modern scientists who
propelled exploration and
discovery of these laws were
men and women who believed in
the existence of an all-powerful
God. Why? They envisioned the
universe to follow laws in
keeping with the rationality and
majesty of God the creator. Just
as God is consistent, unchanging,
there is a constant nature of
science. They believed that God
made the universe to operate
lawfully, according to divine
reason and with glorious beauty.
This is quite different from
people who believed in multiple
gods, each affecting the universe
by their own whim or
temperament. In polytheistic
societies, the gods were
inconsistent and unsearchable
and nature was governed by
gods who could not be known.
The universe behaved, so they
thought, in as much of a mystery
as their gods, with little thought
that it could be otherwise. The
concept of a discoverable,
intelligent, orderly universe that
was rational and predictable
simply was not in their
worldview.
Followers of Christ, on the other
hand, believed God to be rational,
wise and willing to be known,
having seen him to be self-
disclosing in Jesus Christ.
Throughout the Bible are
statements such as:
“For what can be known about
God is plain to them [people],
because God has shown it to
them. For his invisible attributes,
namely, his eternal power and
divine nature, have been clearly
perceived, ever since the creation
of the world, in the things that
have been made.”7
Modern science’s greatest
advancements came from people
who believed what the Scriptures
said about the Lord, that…
“All things were created through
Him and for Him. And He is
before all things, and in Him all
things hold together.”8
They believed that God created
everything and ordered it in a
rational way, for humankind’s
discovery and benefit, and for
God’s glory that we might
recognize his power and majesty
as we observed his mighty deeds
of creation. “Newton and his
contemporaries believed that in
doing science they were
uncovering the divine plan for
the universe in the form of its
underlying mathematical order.”9
Some of leading scientists whose
work was motivated by their
faith were: Copernicus, Kepler,
Galileo, Brahe, Descartes, Boyle,
Newton, Leibniz, Gassendi, Pascal,
Mersenne, Cuvier, Harvey, Dalton,
Faraday, Herschel, Joule, Lyell,
Lavoisier, Priestley, Kelvin, Ohm,
Ampere, Steno, Pasteur, Maxwell,
Planck, Mendel.
These scientists were convinced
that God created a magnificent
universe that could be
mathematically measured,
leading to precise and valuable
discoveries. This led to such
discoveries as Kepler’s third law
stating that the square of the
time of a planet’s revolution is
proportional to the cube of its
mean distance from the sun.
How could anyone have figured
that out? Kepler did, in large part
because he was convinced that
there had to be a beautiful
mathematical relationship that
was hidden and waiting to be
discovered–put in place by an
orderly God whose intellect is far
beyond ours.
Today, even the most secular of
scientists presumes that nature
embodies not only order but
simplicity and beauty.
The question behind scientific
pursuits is legitimate…why is the
universe orderly? For many of the
physicists, cosmologists and
biologists, who laid the
foundation of modern science,
there was a clear answer: there
exists a Creator of all things who
is the rational, loving God, who
constantly reveals himself to
humankind, and upholds the
universe by his own power.10

Bible: Worship God alone

Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written: ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve him only.’ Mathew 4:10 “Do not think that I(Jesus) came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill. “For truly I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest letter or stroke shall pass from the Law until all is accomplished. “Whoever then annuls one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever keeps and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 5:17:19) – Jesus did not come to abolish the law of The Old Testament of the Bible. “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent. (John 17:3) – T

Darwinism is a passe if you know.

The theory of evolution is a
theory that fails at the very
first step. The reason is that
evolutionists are unable to
explain even the formation of
a single protein. Neither the
laws of probability nor the
laws of physics and chemistry
offer any chance for the
fortuitous formation of life.
Does it sound logical or
reasonable when not even a
single chance-formed protein
can exist, that millions of such
proteins combined in an order
to produce the cell of a living
thing; and that billions of cells
managed to form and then
came together by chance to
produce living things; and that
from them generated fish; and
that those that passed to land
turned into reptiles, birds, and
that this is how all the millions
of different species on earth
were formed? Even if it does
not seem logical to you,
evolutionists do believe this
fable.
However, it is merely a belief-
or rather a false faith-because
they do not have even a single
piece of evidence to verify
their story. They have never
found a single transitional
form such as a half-fish/half-
reptile or half-reptile/half-bird.
Nor have they been able to
prove that a protein, or even a
single amino acid molecule
composing a protein, could
have formed under what they
call primordial earth
conditions; not even in their
elaborately-equipped
laboratories have they
succeeded in doing that. On
the contrary, with their every
effort, evolutionists themselves
have demonstrated that no
evolutionary process has ever
occurred nor could ever have
occurred at any time on earth.
Seeing this, evolutionists can
only console themselves by
dreaming that science will
somehow resolve all these
dilemmas in time. However,
that science should ever verify
such an entirely groundless
and illogical claim is out of the
question no matter how many
years may pass by. On the
contrary, as science
progresses it only makes the
nonsense of evolutionists’
claims clearer and plainer.
That is how it has been so far.
As more details on the
structure and functions of the
living cell were discovered, it
became abundantly clear that
the cell is not a simple,
randomly-formed
composition, as was thought
to be the case according to
the primitive biological
understanding of Darwin’s
time.
With the situation being so
self-evident, denying the fact
of creation and basing the
origins of life on extremely
unlikely coincidences, and
then defending these claims
with insistence, may later
become a source of great
humiliation. As the real face of
the evolution theory comes
more and more into view and
as public opinion comes to see
the truth, it may not be long
before the purblind fanatic
advocates of evolution will not
be able to show their
faces.There are many species
in the world that resemble one
another. For instance, there
may be many living beings
resembling a horse or a cat
and many insects may look like
one another. These similarities
do not surprise anyone.
The superficial similarities
between man and ape
somehow attract too much
attention. This interest
sometimes goes so far as to
make some people believe the
false thesis of evolution. As a
matter of fact, the superficial
similarities between men and
apes do signify nothing. Other
than superficial similarity, apes
cannot be said to be closer to
man than to other animals.
Actually, if level of intelligence
is considered, then the
honeybee producing the
geometrically miraculous
structure of the honeycomb or
the spider building up the
engineering miracle of the
spider web can be said to be
closer to man. They are even
superior in some aspects.
Source(s):
Are evolutionists renouncing
the ideological theory of
evolution?
Dr. Robert Milikan is a Nobel
Prize winner and renowned
evolutionist:
“The pathetic thing is that we
have scientists who are trying
to prove evolution, which no
scientist can EVER prove”
Roger Lewin is a well-known
evolutionist science writer and
former editor of New Scientist
magazine:
“Our intelligence, our reflective
consciousness, our extreme
technological facility, our
complex spoken language, our
sense of moral and ethical
values—each of these is
apparently sufficient to set us
apart from nature . . . this gap
is an “embarrassment,”
something to be explained
away”

Coincidences are no coincidences

Tony Rothman (physicist): “When confronted with the order and beauty of the universe and the
strange coincidences of nature, it’s very tempting to take the leap
of faith from science into religion. I am sure many physicists want to. I only wish they would admit
it.”

Tony Rothman