Essay/Term paper: Antony flew: the existence and belief of god

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Philosophy

Antony Flew: The Existence and Belief of God


How can I start this paper? Hmmmm…..??? Let's begin with the parable. Antony
Flew starts off his speech by telling the audience this story of two explorers
that accidentally came upon a garden in a jungle. In this garden, there were
many beautiful flowers and weeds. One explorer says, "some gardener must tend
this plot". While the other disagrees, "there is no gardener". So, these two
explorers tried to figure out who was right and who was wrong. They waited the
whole night, but no gardener was ever seen. Then the "Believer" said that there
must be a gardener, that he "is an invisible gardener". He tried everything he
could to convince to the "Sceptic" that he was right, barbed-wire, electrifying
fence, patrolling bloodhounds. But no gardener was ever found. Still the
"Believer" was not convinced. He gave the "Sceptic" many excuses as to why they
couldn't see the gardener. The "Sceptic" told him that he was crazy because
what started out as a simple assertion that there was a gardener, turned into
"an imaginary gardener".

This parable that Flew is using is clearly an analogy to the existence
and belief of God. The garden represents God, "…invisible, intangible,
insensible…". The "Sceptic" says there is no gardener, just as an atheist
denies the existence God. The "Believer" says there is a gardener, like a
theist telling everyone that God exists. The "Believer" tries to prove that
there was a planter, who planted the seeds for the flowers to grow. This
planter takes care of them, a parallelism to God supposedly taking care of "us".

Flew talks about assertions. He states that "what starts as an
assertion, that something exists…may be reduced step by step to an altogether
different status". He uses the example of how if one man were to talk about
sexual behavior, "another man prefers to talk of Aphrodite". They don't seem to
make sense. How can one confuse the idea of a sexual behavior with Aphrodite?
He also points out the fact that "a fine brash hypothesis may be killed by
inches, the death of a thousand qualifications". A good example of this is
when he said that "God loves us as a father loves his children". He states that
when we see a child dying of cancer, his "earthy father" is there, to help him,
nurture him, trying his best for his son. But his "Heavenly Father", God, is no
where to be found, that he "reveals no obvious sign of concern". The
qualification that is made is that "God's love is not a merely human love or it
is an inscrutable love." What started as a simple statement "God loves us as a
father loves his children", has now turned into this complex idea that "God's
love is not a merely human love…" Also this new, complex thought, have started
even more questions about that nature of God's love, "what is this assurance of
God's love worth…" This is what Flew was talking about, "death of a thousand
qualification", something that is simple, is turned into a complex idea that
needs more answering.
Flew also talks about other assertions such as "God has a plan", "God
created the world". He calls them, a "peculiar danger, a endemic evil, of
theological utterance." He states that they first look "very much like
assertions, vast cosmological assertions", but there is no sure sign, no
evidence that "they either are or are intended to be, assertions". Flew said
that, "for is the utterance is indeed an assertion, it will necessarily be
equivalent to a denial of the negation of that assertion." What he meant is
that if one asserts something then one must deny something. He then goes on by
saying that, "anything which would count against the assertion, or which would
induce the speaker to withdraw it and to admit that it had been mistaken, must
be part of the meaning of the negation of that assertion….and if there is
nothing which a putative assertion denies then there is nothing which it asserts
either; and so it is not really and assertion." What does he mean by this? He
proposes that if an assertion must be continuously qualified in the face of
evidence that counts against it, then the assertion is meaningless. For example,
the "Sceptic" asking the "Believer", "Just how does what you call an invisible,
intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even
from no gardener at all?" He was telling the "Believer" that there was no
gardener, because they had watched the area for a long period of time and he
never showed up. The evidence counts against the gardener. The "Believer's"
statement had been "so eroded by qualification that it was no longer an
assertion at all." It was now very meaningless. He claims that in order for a
belief to be meaningful it must be possible for it to be disproved.
R.M. Hare also starts his speech with another parable. It is about
this lunatic, who was "convinced that all dons want to murder him." A "don"
refers to a Professor at an English University. He believes that they are all
out to get him. He had this strong "blik." Hare refers to a blik as an
"undefined term that appears akin to an unprovable assumption." A blik is like
a very strong belief, I guess.
Many would say that this person is "deluded." But what this mean? What
is he deluded about? He strongly believes that they were out to get him. But
his friends have shown him that they were not. Hare refers to him as having "an
insane blik about dons." That our bilk is sane. He explains that there are two
sides to every argument.
Hare uses another example to give a better understanding of what a blik
is. He talks about how when he is driving, he notices that his movement with
the steering wheel will be followed by a corresponding alteration in the
direction of the car. He thinks about steering failures, skids, and how his car
is made. He said that he knows what must go wrong (problems like the steel rods
break or joints are defected) if he was to have a steering failure. He said
that he have a "blik about steel and its properties." What he probably meant
was that, he knows that steel is a very strong compound and that it does not
break that easily. So, his blik is a sane one. But what if he were to switch
his blik? "People would say I was silly about steel", that he was crazy. There
would be a difference between the respective bliks. For example, he would never
go inside a car because he would feel that the care is unsafe.
Hare goes on to say that our perspective of the world depends on our
bliks about the world and that differences between bliks about the world cannot
be settled by observation of what happens in the world. He is trying to say
that one's bliks is one's bliks, no matter what everyone tells you, no matter
how much evidence there is to prove one wrong. That the individual will
continue to have the same blik.
Hare points out that Flew "selects for attack is to regard this kind of
talk as some sort of explanation." Hare believes that without a blik, we can
not explain what goes on in the world, "there can be no explanation" because it
is "our bliks that we decide what is and is not an explanation". The example
that he gives is what if "everything that happened, happened by pure chance."
He says that this is not an assertion because anything will happen or not happen.
There is no asserting something because we are not trying to deny something
here. This is totally different from Flew's argument, that if one asserts
something that one must deny something. With this belief, he says "we should
not be able to explain or predict or plan anything." Thus, they are no
different then from someone who doesn't have this belief because they will not
be asserting anything. "This is the sort of difference that there is between
those who really believe in God and those who really disbelieve in him," said
Hare .
Hare concludes that there is a very important difference between Flew's
parable and his. He tells us that in Flew's "the explorers do not mind about
their garden, they discuss it with interest, but not with concern." But in his,
"my lunatic, poor fellow, minds about dons, and I mind about the steering of my
car." What is he trying to say here? I think that he's trying to mention that
in Flew's argument that people, the explorers, don't mind about God. They talk
about it and everything but are not "concern." What exactly does this mean not
"concern"? Hare tries to point that in his parable that his explains care about
themselves. They care about what goes on around them. They not only talk about
it. "It is because I mind very much about what goes on in the garden in which I
find myself, that I am unable to share the explorers' detachment," said Hare.
He tried to point out that if he was in the same situation, he would not share
the same views as the explorers. Which is a belief in the g ardener, a belief
in God.
Both of these man had some strong viewpoints. Flew states, if one
asserts something, then one must deny something. What Hare is trying to say is
that, there is two sides to every idea or "assertions", a blik. That that is a
sane blik and a insane blik. Most people have the sane one and those who don't
share this view is point as lunatics. But no one is not trying to deny
something here. The person with the insane blik is not wrong or that he's not
trying to deny something, it's just that his views are different. Flew states,
"what would have to occur or to have occurred to constitute for you a disproof
of the love of, or of the existence of, God?" Hare's reply to this question is
that he calls this "completely victorious." Nothing have to occur because those
who does not share this belief in God have an insane blik. They are not trying
to deny that God doesn't but rather that they views are just different.