Antony Flew: The Existence And Belief Of God Essay, Research Paper

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.