Anthony Flew's story of the 'invisible gardener'...often discussed in

religion-atheism debates

http://freethink.thedashcat.net/freethink03.htm

....

Antony Flew, too, makes a valid point: that an indescribable being is meaningless. Consider Flew's parable of an invisible gardener:



Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, "Some gardener must tend this plot." The other disagrees, "There is no gardener." So they pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. "But perhaps he is an invisible gardener." So they set up a barbed-wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds … But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry. Yet still the Believer is not convinced. "But there is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensible to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves." At last the Skeptic despairs. "But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?"9

more....

was reminded of this when saw LBN article about Flew

Or maybe the gardener is so far advanced beyond simple understanding of the explorers, that he can garden from afar. Or underground. Or through his advanced technology or powers, he only needs to tend the garden once every few months, or years.

In the story, does the garden continue to stay perfect while being guarded? If so, the beyond comprehension argument would work.

Does the garden fall into disrepair? If so, maybe it's because the explorers have turned away from the gardener, and hardened their heart to him (blocked him), so he can't, or chooses not to garden.

Just my thought...

Brentos, the Freshmaker

twice, unmistakeably. I know others, friends, who have as well.

Atheists are a bit like women who think sex isn't very pleasureable because they've never themselves had an orgasm and can't imagine what one feels like.

But Flew's little parable is a rather lousy one. Moral duties are invisible and causally inert. So are numbers, logical relations, the meanings of propositions, and beauty.

But we couldn't get by without them.

I'm impressed.

:eyes:

Yet if an atheist said that you're still a Christian (or whatever you consider yourself to be) simply because you had never applied reason to your beliefs, you'd be rather offended, wouldn't you?

How exactly does that differ - fundamentally - from what you said?

Hell, enormous flamewars have raged on DU when an atheist merely says that she or he holds Jesus to be on the same level as the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, or leprechauns.

as a Sufi master once said, "Concepts of spirituality are concepts. Spirituality is experience."

an old man with a white beard riding a cloud, and he comes to the garden in some other form that they do not recognize. :-)