How the World's Most Noted Atheist Changed His Mind

[Jim__]

38. The watchmaker argument is analogical, his argument is not.

Therefore, his argument is not the watchmaker argument.

No, I don't agree with him. I'm saying that because we disagree with someone, doesn't mean that he is failing mentally.

According to the interview, it was a 20 year migration on his part. So, when people claim that he changed because others were taking advantage of him in his old age, they are claiming that Flew was failing in his 60s. Since the interview was given when he was in his 80s, that's a hard claim to accept.

Here's his basic argument about the need for an intelligent being to explain life:

Antony Flew, who spent most of his life as an atheist, converted to deism late in life because of the anthropic principle.[48] He concluded that the fine-tuning of the universe was too precise to be the result of chance, so accepted the existence of God. He said that his commitment to "go where the evidence leads" meant that he ended up accepting the existence of God.[49] Flew proposed the view, held earlier by Fred Hoyle, that the universe is too young for life to have developed purely by chance and that, therefore, an intelligent being must exist which was involved in designing the conditions required for life to evolve.[48]

That's not the watchmaker argument.

My point is quite simple. We can disagree with someone's argument without assuming that they are mentally failing. To me, it makes much more sense to engage with an argument than to merely attack and ridicule the person making the argument.

Here's a simple question, at the time of the earth's formation, what was the probability that life would evolve? Now, lots of people can throw down answers to that; but how many can cite evidence to support their answers? Was the probability closer to 98% or 0.001%? And what do you base your answer on? Note, it is not a valid probabilistic argument to claim that life evolved therefore the probability was 1. As far as I know, no one knows the answer, or even which probability is closer. If my understanding is correct, then there is no basis for dismissing arguments about the origin of life that don't conflict with the evidence merely because we disagree with the conclusions.