Tag Archives: Anthony Flew

Atheist English philosopher who late in life famously converted to theism.

The complex science that explains consciousness: Faith

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Consciousness poses a serious, and in fact insurmountable problem for  materialist scientists – which includes of course materialist evolutionists.[1]  Brain researcher Robert Lawrence Kuhn captures the problem succinctly: “Try as I have for decades, I cannot remotely imagine how physical matter can become mentally aware.”[2] By “mentally aware” he is referring to consciousness, which he defines as:

“Consciousness is what mental activity feels like inside. The private inner experience of sensation, emotion and thought.”[3]
Robert Lawrence Kuhn

Which is probably the easiest way to view consciousness.[4] But this easy to understand concept of consciousness masks a fundamental conundrum: matter is not conscious. If matter is all that exists, and thus people are no more than intricately structured matter, why are we conscious?

The problem is akin to the origin of life for such materialists. The origin of life problem, briefly stated, is  how did non-living matter – an arrangement of molecules – become a living creature? The problem of consciousness is very similar:  How does an arrangement of non-consciousness matter become conscious? For  the record, materialists have no answer to either question.

Before looking further into the problem, we need to be clear on how  insurmountable a problem consciousness is for those who believe there is nothing beyond the material world. Famed former atheist turned theist Anthony Flew highlighted the problem through the means of  a thought experiment: Continue Reading

Atheists – Willfully Ignorant in their Looking Glass World

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The white hare, Alice, the dodo, Tweedledee & Tweedledum examining the Oraculum as depicted in the Oraculum		 Only in the  looking glass world of Wonderland do atheistic explanations make sense


“I know what you’re thinking about,” said Tweedledum; “but it isn’t so, nohow.”
“Contrariwise,” continued Tweedledee, “If it was so, it might be; and if it were so,  it would be;  but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.”1
— Tweedledum & Tweedledee

 

In the Looking Glass world of Alice in Wonderland, Tweedledee’s “logic” makes perfect sense.  In the real world –  it’s nonsense – or to be more precise – suffers from both a formal and a non-formal logical fallacy.2  Yet it makes perfect sense to Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

In the same manner, the logic of atheists makes perfect sense to them in their looking glass world where they protect themselves from the truth; they can’t see anything wrong with it – yet it is clear to others it is as fallacious as the flawed  logic of Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

When difficult questions are put to atheists about the nature of reality for which the atheistic worldview has no answer, atheists (and evolutionists alike) throw out fine sounding arguments. And like the Looking Glass characters,  their answers have the form of validity, but upon close examination it is apparent their arguments are as fallacious as the logic used by the Tweedles. Let me give a couple of examples.

Consider the question – Why is there something rather than nothing? For the Christian, there’s an easy answer: In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth (Gen 1.1).  For philosophers, it is a very deep philosophical question. In fact Martin Rees, cosmologist, astrophysicist and astronomer royal calls it the “preeminent mystery.”3   Such a formulation does not affirm the Christian worldview, but neither is it overtly antagonistic.  But for particle physicist, skeptic (of the supernatural)  and atheist Victor Stenger that question is:

 “…often the last resort of the theist who seeks to argue for the existence of God from science and finds all his other arguments fail.4


Stengel is clearly antagonistic toward Christianity and is trying to deflect the illuminating power of this question. In his article Why is there Something Rather than Nothing Stenger winds up comparing “nothingness” to an unstable, simple system. What he does not seem to realize is that is an invalid comparison because a system – however simple –  is something; while nothingness is – well  nothingness. Or as famous former atheist turned theist Anthony Flew put it:

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