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.