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Monday December 13, 2004



Prominent Atheist "Discovers" Aquinas' Proof for the Existence of "a god"

Only 750 years behind the times


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December 13, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Professor Antony Flew, a leading proponent of atheism and defender of Darwinian Evolution, has re-invented the philosophical wheel and announced that he has come to believe in God, or more precisely, in the existence of a god, based on evidence of creation. Flew told the Associated Press in an interview that he has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe.

Flew said of his newly discovered god, that it was the god of deism, an Enlightenment notion of a divine "watchmaker" who, after creating the universe and winding it up and setting it going, had nothing further to do with it. "It could be a person in the sense of a being that has intelligence and a purpose, I suppose," said Flew.

Flew spent several years at Toronto's York University after retiring from full time professorships in England in 1982. His Deism has been growing for the last several months. He wrote in the August-September issue of Britain's Philosophy Now magazine, "It has become inordinately difficult even to begin to think about constructing a naturalistic theory of the evolution of that first reproducing organism."

Flew's explanation, that a god, or divine intelligence of some kind must exist because of the existence of extremely complex biological systems such as the DNA molecule, leaves him just over 700 years behind the times.

St Thomas Aquinas, in his book for beginners, the Summa Theologica, called Flew's "discovery" the "Argument from Design," and added four more logical proofs for the existence of God. Most modern philosophers, firmly wedded to the materialist philosophies originating in the 18th century, instead of refuting or attempting to disprove St. Thomas' proofs, have simply ignored them.

Flew has written about his 'conversion' in a new edition of his 1966 book, "God and Philosophy," to be published next year by Prometheus Books. He said, "My whole life has been guided by the principle of Plato's Socrates: Follow the evidence, wherever it leads."

To read St. Thomas Aquinas Five Proofs:
http://www.newadvent.org/summa/100203.htm

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