Intellectual Pilgrimage: Excerpts from Anthony Flew's Intellectual Journey (2)

Intellectual Pilgrimage: Excerpts from Anthony Flew's Intellectual Journey (2) * Note: This series is from the book (There is a God: How the World's Most Powerful One Changed His Thoughts?) For more see the book. For the past two decades, an entire intellectual framework has been in a state of travel, impermanence, and transformation. This has been the result of an ongoing evaluation of the successive evidences emerging in nature. When I came to the realization of the existence of God, there was no systematic paradigm shift, as typical as it is, pursuant to the Socratic intellectual norm described by Plato in his book The Republic: “We must follow the evidence, where it leads.” The best way to answer this question is to ask another question: are we engaged in a scientific or philosophical debate? When we study the interaction between two physical particles, for example, two minutes of atoms, then we talk in science. But when we ask how the minutes of atoms – or anything physical – can be made up of nothingness, and why? Thinking like a philosopher. In 2004, I claimed that life could not be explained solely by matter. Critics responded by declaring that I had not read any research paper in any scientific journal, or that I had not followed any developments related to autonomic epigenetics. In doing so, they did not touch on the key point. I was not interested in these or those facts in chemistry or genetics. But the central question is, what does it mean to be alive, and how does this relate to the strength of chemical and genetic facts by looking at them as a whole. Thinking like that is the philosopher's thinking. Although I have been called rude, I must admit that it is the role of philosophers, not that of scientists; The scientists' jurisdiction does not give them any advantage when considering this issue, but rather like a baseball player who lacks aptitude when it comes to filtering a toothpaste that is useful for teeth. Of course, not all scientists will agree with my own interpretation of the facts that gave rise to it. But their opposition to my view should be based on “philosophical” arguments. This should be easy to grasp. If they present their views on the economics of science, such as counting the number of jobs created by science and technology, they should be able to pass their case through the economic analysis court. Einstein said, “The man of science is a weak philosopher.” Fortunately, this is not always the case. Over the last 100 years, scientific pioneers, as well as most influential scientists today, have been creating a philosophically compelling vision of a palatable universe that has emerged from the mind of God. I was passionate about three areas of science specifically, and I will review them during the talk here, based on the evidence and evidence of today. The first is the question that puzzled, and still puzzles, the majority of thinking scientists: how did the laws of nature come into being? The second is striking: how did life arise as a phenomenon of inanimateness? The third is the dilemma that philosophers have referred to cosmologists: how did the universe come into being; the universe by which we mean all physical things? Follows... (1) Albert Einstein, Out of My Later Years (New York: Philosophical Library, 1950), 58. - Anthony Flew. — Source: Brahin Center website - Published on 2018-01-20 (archived at the Internet Archive) https://braheen.com/articles/philosophy/حج-فكري-مقتطفات-من-رحلة-أنتوني-فلو-الفكرية-2