Two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing they found many flowers and many weeds. One explorer said, "A gardener must tend this plot". The other explorer disagreed. "No, there’s no gardener here."
The argument gets so furious they decide they’ll wait. They pitch a tent and set a watch, but no gardener is ever seen. "perhaps he is an invisible gardener, like the invisible man in that book by HG Wells" suggests the believer. So they set up a barbed wire fence, electrify it and patrol it with bloodhounds. But there are no cries from the hounds or movements of wire or shrieks from the invisible gardener. Yet still the Believer is not convinced. "But there is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensitive to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden he loves." The Sceptic is now driven to terribly frustration. "But what remains of the original claim? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or no gardener at all?"
This story was told by philosopher Anthony Flew to suggest that meaningful talk about God is impossible. Yet Christians do not engage in simple God talk. Rather we point to a concrete historical event – the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ – as the ultimate demonstration of God’s existence. Perhaps what Flew’s story does show is that if we are after indisputable proof for God’s existence it is often where we start from that determines our conclusion. Where the Believer sees a gardener, the Sceptic sees an untended field.
Applications: God's existence, scepticism, apologetics
Source: Scott Higgins. Flew’s parable found in Philosophy Now
October/November 2000