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 Constant Gardener (film)
Gardener Gardening
Hare! (Field Not Pictured)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...