The Scientific World Is Turning to God

 

"As people have certainly been influenced by me, I want to try and correct the enormous damage I may have done." (Anthony Flew)

The newspapers these days are echoing with these regret-filled words by Anthony Flew, in his time a well-known atheist philosopher.

 

The decisive factor in this radical change of
view is the clear and definitive evidence revealed by science on the subject
of creation. Flew realised, in the face of the information-based complexity of
life, that the true origin of life is intelligent design and that the atheism
he had espoused for 66 years was a discredited philosophy.

Flew announced the scientific reasons
underlying this change in belief in these terms:

"Biologists' investigation of DNA has
shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are
needed to produce [life], that intelligence must have been involved." (1)

"It has become inordinately difficult
even to begin to think about constructing a naturalistic theory of the
evolution of that first reproducing organism." (2)

"I have been persuaded that it is
simply out of the question that the first living matter evolved out of dead
matter and then developed into an extraordinarily complicated
creature." (3)

The DNA research which Flew cites as a
fundamental reason for his change of opinion has indeed revealed striking
facts about creation. The helix shape of the DNA molecule, its possession of
the genetic code, the nucleotide strings that refute blind chance, the storage
of encyclopaedic quantities of information and many other striking findings
have revealed that the structure and functions of this molecule were arranged
for life with a special design. Comments by scientists concerned with DNA
research bear witness to this fact.

Francis Crick, for instance, one of the
scientists who revealed the helix shape of DNA admitted in the face of the
findings regarding DNA that the origin of life indicated a miracle:

An honest man, armed with all the knowledge
available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life
appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions
which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going. (4)

Based on his calculations, Led Adleman of the
University of Southern California in Los Angeles has stated that one
gram of DNA can store as much information as a
trillion compact discs. (5)
Gene Myers, a scientist employed on the Human Genome Project, has said the
following in the face of the miraculous arrangements he witnessed:

"What really astounds me is the architecture of life… The system is
extremely complex. It's like it was designed… There's a huge intelligence
there." (6)

The most striking fact about DNA is that the
existence of the coded genetic information can definitely not be explained in
terms of matter and energy or natural laws. Dr. Werner Gitt, a professor at
the German Federal Institute of Physics and Technology, has said this on the
subject:

A code system is always the result of a
mental process… It should be emphasized that matter as such is unable to
generate any code. All experiences indicate that a thinking being
voluntarily exercising his own free will, cognition, and creativity, is
required… There is no known natural law through which matter can give rise
to information, neither is any physical process or material phenomenon known
that can do this. (7)

Creationist scientists and philosophers
played a major role in Flew's acceptance of intelligent design, backed up by
all these findings. In recent times Flew participated in debates with
scientists and philosophers who were proponents of creation, and exchanged
ideas with them. The final turning point in that process was a discussion
organised by the Institute for Metascientific Research in Texas in May, 2003.
Flew participated together with author Roy Abraham Varghese, Israeli physicist
and molecular biologist Gerald Schroeder, and Roman Catholic philosopher John
Haldane. Flew was impressed by the weight of the scientific evidence in favour
of creation and by the convincing nature of his opponents' arguments, and
abandoned atheism as an idea in the period following that discussion. In a
letter he wrote for the August-September, 2003, edition of the British
magazine Philosophy Now, he recommended Schroeder's book "The
Hidden Face of God: Science Reveals the Ultimate Truth" and Varghese's
book "The Wonderful World."(8)
During an interview with the professor of philosophy and theology Gary R.
Habermas, who also played a major role in his change of mind (9),
and also on the video "Has Science Discovered God?," he openly
stated that he believed in intelligent design.

The "Intelligence
Pervading the Universe" and the Collapse of Atheism

In the face of all the scientific
developments outlined above, the acceptance of intelligent design by Antony
Flew, famous for defending atheism for many years, reflects a final scene in
the process of collapse being undergone by atheism. Modern science has
revealed the existence of an "intelligence pervading the universe,"
thus leaving atheism out of the equation.

In his book "The Hidden Face of
God," Gerald Schroeder, one of the creationist scientists who influenced
Flew, writes:

"A single consciousness, a universal
wisdom, pervades the universe. The discoveries of science, those that search
the quantum nature of subatomic matter, have moved us to the brink of a
startling realization: all existence is the expression of this wisdom. In
the laboratories we experience it as information that first physically
articulated as energy and then condensed into the form of matter. Every
particle, every being, from atom to human, appears to represent a level of
information, of wisdom." (10)

Scientific research into both the functioning
of the cell and the subatomic particles of matter has revealed this fact in an
indisputable manner: Life and the universe were brought into being from
nothing by the will of an entity possessed of a superior mind and wisdom.
There is no doubt that the possessor of that knowledge and mind that pervade
the universe at all levels is Almighty Allah. Allah reveals this truth in the
Qur'an:

Both East and West belong to
Allah, so wherever you turn, the Face of Allah is there. Allah is
All-Encompassing, All-Knowing." (Qur'an, 2:115)

___________________________________________

i Richard
N. Ostling, "Lifelong atheist changes mind about divine creator,"
The Washington Times 10 December 2004; http://washingtontimes.com/national/20041209-113212-2782r.htm

2- Antony Flew, "Letter from Antony Flew on Darwinism and Theology,"
Philosophy Now; http://www.philosophynow.org/issue47/47flew.htm

3- Stuart Wavell and Will Iredale, "Sorry, says atheist-in-chief, I do
believe in God after all," The Sunday Times, 12 December 2004; http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1400368,00.html

4- Francis Crick, Life Itself: Its Origin and Nature, New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1981, p. 88

5- John Whitfield, "Physicists plunder life's tool chest", 24 April
2003; http://www.nature.com/nsu/030421/030421-6.html

6- San Francisco Chronicle, 19 February, 2001

7- Werner Gitt, In the Beginning Was Information, CLV, Bielenfeld, Germany,
pp. 64-7, 79

8- Antony Flew, "Letter from Antony Flew on Darwinism and Theology,"
Philosophy Now; http://www.philosophynow.org/issue47/47flew.htm

9- "Atheist Becomes Theist: Exclusive Interview with Former Atheist
Antony Flew;" http://www.biola.edu/antonyflew/index.cfm

10- Gerald Schroeder, The Hidden Face of God, Touchstone, New York, 2001, p.
xi