Reports of God's death somewhat exaggerated

Firstly, credit where credit is due for the quote used in the title.

I found this interesting article from an evangelical blogger with a thing for philosophy - seriously it's worth anyone reading it just for the 'Know Your Evangelicals' series, check out those photos. And check out the controversial one, Tony Campolo - interesting reading.

He reports that an influential atheist, Anthony Flew, has quietly conceeded that evolution does not invalidate all of the arguments of what philosophers call natural philosophy - the attempt to argue from the groud up to a belief in God.

Natural philosophy classically argues that if you found a watch on an empty beach you would not rationally conclude that it was randomly composed of millions of years and likewise that a complex organism, such as a human, implies design. Evolution appeared to some to rebut this argument by providing a plausible mechanism by which organisms (and watches if they could reproduce and had DNA) could progress towards higher order. This occured by tiny increments of natural selection in which a small improvement was kept in the gene pool because "it worked".

Flew has now conceded that even with evolution:

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

That is, even if you get from amoeba' to ape's (hey! cool alliteration ey?) you still have to get from rocks to amoeba's (amoebii??) and this is Very Hard, or at least is vulnerable to a rehash of the original argument for design - ie. people have been ignoring the "and watches if" bit from above for too long.

Now this is not a complete rout for the atheists. Flew added:

"Our disagreements begin with any shift from the God of natural theology to the God of a Revelation."

Typical philosopher, always disagreeing...

So anyone who thought evolutionary theory alone was sufficient reason to abandon a faith please dutifully convert and report to your nearest place of religion for 're-education'. As for the rest of you...

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