You may have seen the news: There is a God, leading atheist concludes. Antony Flew, famous atheist philosopher, has changed his mind.

Well, sort of. Although much of the news coverage acts as if he’s joined the fundies, the truth is a little less wild. He has decided on the basis of a (bad, and already refuted in my view) statistical argument about DNA, that we should accept “Spinoza’s God”. Now, I’m no fan of Spinoza’s God — that pantheistic, non-personal, “God is the universe” thing. But on the scale of most theists, this is still a view way closer to atheism than to theism. No Jesus. No afterlife. No miracles. No gay-hating. No daddy in the sky watching us masturbate. Just that divine blue glow that underlies all existence. Which I pretty much believe in too, but I prefer to call it “electromagnetic radiation” rather than “God”.

Richard Carrier sheds some light on all this in Antony Flew Considers God…Sort Of. Some bits:

Antony and I exchanged letters on the issue recently, and what I report here about his current views comes from him directly…. The fact of the matter is: Flew hasn’t really decided what to believe. He affirms that he is not a Christian–he is still quite certain that the Gods of Christianity or Islam do not exist, that there is no revealed religion, and definitely no afterlife of any kind… But he is increasingly persuaded that some sort of Deity brought about this universe, though it does not intervene in human affairs, nor does it provide any postmortem salvation. He says he has in mind something like the God of Aristotle, a distant, impersonal “prime mover.” It might not even be conscious, but a mere force. In formal terms, he regards the existence of this minimal God as a hypothesis that, at present, is perhaps the best explanation for why a universe exists that can produce complex life…. and he confesses he has not been able to keep up with the relevant literature in science and theology… [including] any of the literature of the past five or ten years on the science of life’s origin….

I asked him point blank what he would mean if he ever asserted that “probably God exists,” to which he responded… “I do not think I will ever make that assertion, precisely because any assertion which I am prepared to make about God would not be about a God in that sense … I think we need here a fundamental distinction between the God of Aristotle or Spinoza and the Gods of the Christian and the Islamic Revelations…. my God is… emphatically not good (or evil) or interested in human conduct… My one and only piece of relevant evidence [for an Aristotelian God] is the apparent impossibility of providing a naturalistic theory of the origin from DNA of the first reproducing species … [In fact] the only reason which I have for beginning to think of believing in a First Cause god is the impossibility of providing a naturalistic account of the origin of the first reproducing organisms.”

I have seen some variants of the kind of arguments Flew is considering; I think they commit a fallacy in statistical inference. But I’ll happy look at whatever new versions there are.

Still, you can see that the coverage of this has been bizarre: I’m thinking Flew hasn’t and wouldn’t have made mainstream news for anything else, but they love this shit. The idea that people are fleeing atheism is the big lie they love to tell, but it flies in the face of all the demographic evidence. One 80-year-old philosopher becoming a tentative conjecturer of “Spinoza’s God” does not a trend make.river loans oh rocky bridgestudent loan columbia service britishburbank redevelopment loans20consolidation 20debt business 20loanscard small business credit loanequipment business loangrant business loan andbusiness loan faqs Map

Here’s a another tiny glimmer of something good. PollingReport.com puts together lots of good polls, including a bunch on religion. And most are fairly depressing.

But this one’s kind of encouraging: In the last year, we flipped from 50% of people saying political leaders don’t pay enough attention to religion and religious leaders (and 34% saying they pay too much attention), to it being the other way around: 51% say they pay too much attention, and 35% say not enough.

I take my small tidbits of encouragement where I get them.

Ohio Church Collapses After Sun. Service

CINCINNATI (AP) — The walls of a church fell about 90 minutes after the last of Sunday’s worshippers left, causing the roof to drop onto the pews and pulpit, officials said. [...] “God must be telling us it’s time to move,” said Jerry Givens, a member for 30 years. “And that’s what we’ll do.”

But, you ask, why does it mean that? Why wouldn’t it just mean something else, like a test of faith to rebuild it right where it was? Ah, but that’s the beauty of divine communication: it means anything in the world that you want it to mean. Praise God.

It’s nice to be reminded why we don’t drink the punch: The Christmas Miracle

Dec. 5 – Seventy-nine percent of Americans believe that, as the Bible says, Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, without a human father, according to a new NEWSWEEK poll on beliefs about Jesus.

Yep, 79%. Pregnancy without any contact with a male or sperm. Try that shit today.

Sixty-seven percent say they believe that the entire story of Christmas�the Virgin Birth, the angelic proclamation to the shepherds, the Star of Bethlehem and the Wise Men from the East�is historically accurate. Twenty-four percent of Americans believe the story of Christmas is a theological invention written to affirm faith in Jesus Christ, the poll shows. In general, say 55 percent of those polled, every word of the Bible is literally accurate. Thirty-eight percent do not believe that about the Bible.

So, we have Noah’s Ark, virgin births, and messenger angels. These are the folks who have opinions about stem cell research and abortion?

I have a Darwin fish on my car. But I don’t think I have quite the balls to display this one.

But I wish I did.

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It’s hard to avoid the variable of religious bullshit when you talk about this in the context of Dubya’s administration: Washington Funds False Sex Lessons

The Bush administration is funding sexual health projects that teach children that HIV can be contracted through sweat and tears, touching genitals can result in pregnancy, and that a 43-day-old foetus is a thinking person.

Abstinence at any price.

For those of you who don’t read the comments: Comrade-in-arms The Angry Atheist points us to a nice glimmer of light — a piece in the new National Geographic called “Was Darwin Wrong?“, which answers its own question with a resounding “No fucking way!” (or words to that effect). Check it out.

(I personally have many fond memories of my family’s National Geographic subscription during my formative years. For the maps. You know. The maps.)

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