Atheist turns Deist
The Catholic Herald – Cosmic Accident
The Catholic Herald, which I’m afraid is way cooler than our cute Katholiek Nieuwsblad, features a review of Anthony Flew’s book “There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind”. Flew, the article tells me, was indeed a notorious atheist, although since I greatly lack in any actual knowledge of our world besides what’s taking place in my own room at college I had never heard of him before.
What struck me in the review is how Flew turned around the “monkeys at type writers”-argument, in which atheists compare an infinite amount of monkeys and typewriters at some time producing the entire works of Shakespeare to how our universe came to be in a small puff of statistical chance. He turns the monkeys into computer chips, plugs in the age of our universe, does some good old calculatin’ and concludes: “You will never get even a single sonnet by chance – let alone the complete works. The universe would have to be 10 to the 600th times larger.”
While this proves the existence of a Creator to the same extent as the monkeys disproved it (which is, not)*, it does, for me, illustrate how atheism is as much a religion (“the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power”, in this case, random chance) as any theistic world view out there.
The book used in the master-level Cosmology course I’m more or less taking clearly states that in some aspects, cosmology will tell you more about yourself than about what’s actually Out There. Like whether you prefer millions upon millions of alternate universes (which we will never be able to see, measure, or contact in any way) to explain the fairly obvious existence of our own universe… or a single God.
One of my better friends is a self-proclaimed radical atheist who likes to make me read books by Dawkins, which I then duly do, while he eagerly awaits my rational mind throwing off the oppressive and smothering duvet of orthodox Catholicism. Unfortunately, up until now my irrational romantic tendencies, want of a social safety net, brainwashing by authority figures and fear of death have won, but he still has high hopes for my salvation.
He’s a smart guy. I have high hopes for his.
*This is, of course, actually a good thing, because the rational proof of God would be a very nasty thing indeed.
PS – should I specifically mention that I WANT THIS BOOK? :) Why oh why is my birthday so far away? Hm, my feast day is June 26th…
