The Deism of Antony Flew is Self-Contradictory
Re: MucCulloch @ debatingchristianity.com
Quote:
Originally Posted by McCulloch
A critical review of these posts reveal that these claims are overblown exaggerations.
The foremost contemporary philosophical, atheist scholar of the 20th century, Antony Flew agrees with these 12 facts.
You're missing the point. Almost all scholars who do their thesis or peer review journal work on the resurrection (deeply studying the matter), Christian or non-Christian, admit these 12 facts.
In The Case for the Real Jesus by Lee Strobel (p. 112), Mike Licona said, "[Gary] Habermas has compiled a list of more than 2,200 sources in French, German, and English in which experts have written on the resurrection from 1975 to the present. He has identified minimal facts that are strongly evidenced and which are regarded as historical by a large majority of scholars, including skeptics. We try to come up with the best historical explanation to account for these facts. This is called the Minimal Facts Approach."
William Lane Craig (sadly, a non-OSASer) does confirm Habermas recorded 1400 scholars (both skeptics and non-skeptics alike) whom 75% agree the tomb was empty and nearly all agree the original disciples truly believed they had seen Jesus alive from the dead bodily, for a vision wouldn't convince the disciples of resurrection.
Antony Flew for most of his life was the leading scholar and believer of atheism, and in 2004 recanted his views and realized after all his years of analysis that theism is true. You will never come anywhere near to the work he has done, yet you remain an atheist? This shows how arrogant you are, how pompous and powerful your flesh is to rationalize any lie. Sadly though, Antony Flew was a deist, believing in a false god, who is unloving, impersonal, not revealing himself (unable to) which is a contradiction. How can you know if God exists if he doesn't reveal himself?
Antony's self-contradiction exposes his god is not God. Whereas God of the Bible reveals Himself to us, entering into His creation personally. How can God's standards be less than our own? We are personal, so is God of the Bible.
It's clear Antony Flew believes in a fantasy god, not a realistic one who has a response to sin and evil. While Antony considers such responses of that of a despot, Christians would not want a God who is not righteously in control of all things so all scenarios are handled with the utmost care and realism. The god of Antony's selfish self is not in keeping with our own experience, for our God stopped Hitler. Our God puts people in jail for their crimes. Our God is a just and holy God, the God Antony rejects for an evil god who lets sin and evil go unpunished or to claim there is no such thing as sin and evil.
Free will is not truly free if you don't have the choice to eternally separate yourself from God forever. Think how evil it is for Hitler or a mass murderer who on his deathbed still rejected God's saving grace, yet that person gets to go to heaven? Think of Antony's god as like a god of robots where nobody gets the choice to rebel and there is no evil. Of course that is a contradiction, because obviously there is evil every day. For example, when you are walking down the street you a programmed not to be able to walk in front of the street to get run over by a car. Or a person can't have a jealous rage then kill another. These options are all off the table for the god of Antony Flew. That's not reality. It's not reality because that is obviously not how things are except in his fantasy life. Nor does it make man in God's image with the full gambit of choices for free will. Antony was a confused soul, now deceased and going to Hell.
Antony, furthermore, contradicts himself yet again because we live in a world such as this with many evil things going on, yet it would be of the god of deism of Antony Flew according to him who is the cause. Hence, by his own reckoning the god of deism is evil since his god is the cause of these things. In fact, that is what deism teaches. Deism teaches this world was created by an evil god, not the actual God, hence, all the evil you see. Yet that would make the One True God evil for allowing an evil god to create this universe. Again, nothing but contradictions from Antony Flew. Whereas the Christian God says this evil is due to the sin and rebellion and independency of fallen men as taught in Scripture rather than being caused by the allegedly loving god of deism.
