Flew states: "It seems to me that for a strong moral argument, you've got to have God as the justification of morality. To do this makes doing the morally good a purely prudential matter rather than, as the moral philosophers of my youth used to call it, a good in itself."

There is no evidence that can be scientifically offered for this statement. It's an opinion for whatever reason. The fact that he was at one time a credible scientist doesn't make his opinion substantial.

He goes on, ". Perhaps I should mention that, when I was in college, I attended fairly regularly the weekly meetings of C. S. Lewis's Socratic Club. In all my time at Oxfordthese meetings were chaired by Lewis. I think he was by far the most powerful of Christianapologists for the sixty or more years following his founding of that club. As late as the 1970s, I used to find that, in the USA, in at least half of the campus bookstores of the universities andliberal art colleges which I visited, there was at least one long shelf devoted to his very various published works. "

Although Flew was kindly disposed toward C.S. Lewis, the fact that he is well published
does not give Lewis any particular special scientific credibility.

He continues: "It seems to me that Richard Dawkins constantly overlooks the fact that Darwin himself, in the fourteenth chapter of The Origin of Species, pointed out that his whole argument began with a being which already possessed reproductive powers."

Darwin did not say that this was a supreme being. That's a point of interpretation on
Flew's part. There were many beings with reproductive powers and not simply one.

Darwin didn't have the scientific information then that we have today about the origins of the galaxies and life in general.

Flew manages to support his claims of Deism by citing philosophers, not scientists.
Hume may be the closest to a scientific bent but is in the realm of philosophy, not science.

Flew is asked "So of the major theistic arguments, such as the cosmological, teleological,moral, and ontological, the only really impressive ones that you take to be decisive are the scientific forms of teleology?"

Teleology is a theistic concept. A Divine Watchmaker. Unsupportable by scientific evidence.

I think Flew was unduly influenced by his relationship with the theologians and philosophers who were his mentors. He became wrapped in the spiderweb of metaphysics which prevailed during his time in college.

As to the First Cause, if we are to accept it at all, then I disagree with Flew in that it is
very important to concern ourselves with its implications. It impinges on how we perceive
the "Big Bang". Of course there's the question as to what caused The First Cause?

I think that Flew has flown out of the realm of science into philosophical and theological
speculation. I think Dawkins would concur with that.


Frank