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Truth Journal
Messages from Professors Antony Flew,
Wallace Matson, Paul Kurtz, Albert Ellis and
Mr. Frederick Edwords
(Board of Respondents)
Professor Anthony Flew: D. Litt. (Keele) Casberd Scholar of St.
John's College, Oxford. He received the John Locke Scholarship in Mental
Philosophy (1948). Professor of Philosophy in York University, Toronto.
Professor and lecturer at various institutions including King's College,
University of Aberdeen. He has held numerous academic positions
including philosophy advisor for the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission
in London and visiting lecturer on behalf of the British Council to
Poland, Burma, Thailand, Argentina, and Brazil. He is corresponding
member of the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of the Claims
of the Paranormal, Member of the Council of the Royal Institute of
Philosophy, Member of the Academic Advisory Board of the Adam Smith
Institute, Vice-President of the Rationalist Press Association, Member
of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society (1974-79), and Foundation Member of
the Council of the Freedom Association. His writings include: God and
Philosophy (Harcourt Brace & World, 1967); The Presumption of Atheism
(Pemberton/Elek, and Barnes & Noble, 1976); and A Rational Animal
(Clarendon, 1978); Professor Flew is generally regarded as the most
influential contemporary representative of philosophical
atheism.
On two counts we can, I believe, trust the people promoting
Truth. First, like C. S. Lewis, they will not "ask anyone to
accept Christianity if his best reasoning tells him that the weight of
the evidence is against it." Second, their concern will be with and for
the historic Christian faith, and not any of the secular and Third
Worldly substitutes peddled nowadays by so many pseudo-Christians and
ex-Christians in nominally Christian organizations. (The person who
called the WCC 'UNESCO in a clerical collar' surely hit one nail on the
head!) Notoriously, I reject the real thing. Still less am I prepared to
accept such substitutes!
Professor Wallace Matson: Professor of Philosophy at the University
of California at Berkeley. He has a Ph.D from the University of
California and is a Guggenheim Fellow. His writings include: The
Existence of God, and A History of Philosophy.
Do you recall the Monty Python debate on the existence of God? John
Cleese introduces a cassocked priest and a tweed-jacketed professor of
philosophy. They shake hands. A bell clangs: the locale is revealed to
be not a BBC studio but a wrestling arena, where they are to settle the
question by two falls out of three.
I guess this journal will take a more intellectual approach to
controversy about the nature and origin of the universe and human
destiny. One can only wish it well, and I hereby do so. I am less
hopeful than I used to be, though, about the possibility of bringing
reason to bear in religion.
Professor Paul Kurtz: Professor of Philosophy at the State
University of New York at Buffalo, Editor of Free Inquiry magazine,
published by the Council for Democratic and Secular Humanism. He is the
author or editor of 22 books, including In Defense of Secular Humanism
and The Humanist Alternative, on the Board of Directors of the
International Humanist and Ethical Union. He also drafted Humanist
Manifesto II. He is editor-in-chief of Prometheus Books.
I am glad to accept your invitation to become a respondent. I am
committed to inquiry and the quest for truth. The fact that I am on your
masthead as a respondent does not mean that I necessarily endorse the
claims made on behalf of Christianity. But I welcome any effort at
dialogue.
Professor Albert Ellis: Ph.D in Clinical Psychology, Columbia
University. He has served as chief professor, psychologist and
consultant in Clinical Psychology at various places including New Jersey
State University and New York City. He is currently the Executive
Director of the Institute for Rational-Emotive Therapy. He has over
forty years of practice in psychotherapy and counseling, continuing his
practice at the Psychological Clinic of the Institute in New York City.
He has served as Fellow in numerous associations, including The American
Psychological Association, where he also served as president, and The
American Orthopsychiatric Association. He is a Diplomat in Clinical
Psychology of the American Board of Professional Psychology, the
American Board of Psychotherapy, and the American Board of Psychological
Hypnosis. He has served as Vice-President of the American Academy of
Psychotherapists, Chairman of the Marriage Counseling Section of the
National Council of Family Relations and Executive Committee Member of
the Divisions of Psychotherapy, Humanistic Psychology of the American
Psychological Association and of the New York Society of Clinical
Psychologists. He holds the Humanist of the Year Award of the American
Humanist Association, the Distinguished Psychologist Award of the
Academy of Psychologists in Marital and Family Therapy, and the
Distinguished Practitioner Award of the Division of Psychotherapy of the
American Psychological Association. He is a member of the National
Academy of Practice in Psychology. Among his numerous writings are:
Reason and Emotion in Psychotherapy, Humanistic Psychotherapy: The
Rational-Emotive Approach, and A Guide to Personal Happiness.
I am delighted to be on the Board of Respondents of Truth as long as it
actually keeps exploring the rational and irrational ideas in Christian
thought and is opposed to all kinds of religious and philosophical
censorship. If it achieves these goals, it will indeed be a worthwhile
journal.
Mr. Frederick Edwords: Executive Director of the American Humanist
Association and Editor of Creation/Evolution.
I congratulate the editors and contributors of this new journal on their
willingness to support their Christian ideas with rational argument and
present their case to a candid and critical audience. I would only
caution that a true spirit of free inquiry would be compromised by any
unbending loyalty to a faith, and thus it is my hope that those arguing
from a given perspective would be open to the possible abandonment of
that perspective if it were found inadequate.
Also on the Board of Respondents:
Professor Nathan Glazer: Ph.D (1962) in Sociology, Columbia
University. Nominated for President American Sociological Association,
1972-73. Secretary to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
(1980-82). He delivered the Walgreen Lectures in 1955, the Saposnekow
Lectures in 1970, the William M. Cook Lectures in 1974, and the
Jefferson Lectures in 1978. He was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced
Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. He is the
author of several well-known sociological works and is Co-Editor (with
Irving Kristol) of The Public Interest. He is Professor of Education and
Social Studies at Harvard University.
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Updated: 14 July 2002
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