Posts Tagged History

My grad school philosophy and apologetics professor, Dr. Thomas B. Warren (God rest his soul), has the distinction of holding the longest debate on the Existence of God on record. His debate with Anthony Flew on four consecutive nights in Denton, Texas was a masterpiece of preparation and execution. Dr. Warren’s charts and diagrams went up like smoke from a fire.

Dr. Flew was considered the world’s premier philosophical atheist. He had spent his life arguing the atheist position and had written many important philosophical works, including God and Philosophy (1966) and Evolutionary Ethics (1967). He held to the presupposition of atheism and claimed that it was the default position.

The debate covers a large swath of intellectual territory including evolution, the classic arguments for the existence of God – the cosmological and teleological arguments, and more. Dr. Warren is a skilled logician and it shows during the debate. If you have an interest in serious philosophical discussion, take a day out of your life and listen to this debate. You will be richly rewarded.

Warren – Flew Debate

Anthony Flew, world-renowned atheist-philosopher turned deist, passed away last week.  My graduate school apologetics professor, Dr. Thomas B. Warren, debated Dr. Flew over four nights in 1976 in what could be the longest debate on the Existence of God on record. We had always hoped that the cumulative effect of debates with Christians could have a positive effect. In this case, we think they did. See the Times article:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/books-obituaries/7586929/Professor-Antony-Flew.html

See the Complete 4 night Warren-Flew debate on the Existence of God here:

http://www.thebible1.net/video/warrenflewdebate/

Here we chose to include quotations from various sources and ask you to guess their authorship. It would be very easy to “google” the quote and come up with the answer in short order. But we ask you to refrain and first spend a few moments thinking about the content and meaning of the quotation. Then, go for it – give it your best guess. We’ll provide the answer and source later.

So, who said this:

“I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

Who said this:

“A little philosophy inclines man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy brings men’s minds about to religion.”

This quote is a little longer, but, who said it?

Many years ago, in the spring of 1974, I visited the cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. There were not many people around, and it was quiet and still inside. I gazed in silent awe at the great Rose Window, glowing in the morning sun. All at once the cathedral was filled with a huge volume of sound: an organ playing magnificently for a wedding taking place in a distant corner. Bach’s Tocata and Fugue in D Minor. I had always loved the opening theme; but in the cathedral, filling the enire vastness, it seemed to enter and possess my whole self. It was as though the music itself was alive..”

That moment, a suddenly captured moment of eternity, was perhaps the closest I have ever come to experiencing ecstasy, the ectasy of the mystic. How could I believe it was the chance gyrations of bits of primeval dust that had led up to that moment in time – the cathedral soaring to the sky; the collective inspiration of faith of those who caused it to be built; the advent of Bach himself; the brain, his brain, that translated truth into music; and the mind that could, as mine did then, comprehend the whole inexorable progression of evolution? Since I cannot believe that this was the result of chance, I have to admit anti-chance. And so I must believe in a guiding power in the universe – in other words, I must believe in God