The Turning of an Atheist (Antony Flew)

New York Times Magazine ^ | 4 November 2007 | MARK OPPENHEIMER

[shrinkermd]

THE STARTLING ARTICLE appeared on Dec. 9, 2004. “A British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion of atheism for more than a half-century has changed his mind,” Richard Ostling of The Associated Press wrote. “He now believes in God — more or less — based on scientific evidence and says so on a video released Thursday.

At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A superintelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature, Flew said in a telephone interview from England.”

The “video released Thursday” was “Has Science Discovered God?” a DVD of a May 2004 conversation, held in a television studio at New York University, between Flew and two popular advocates of theism, the Orthodox Jewish physicist Gerald Schroeder and the Christian philosopher John Haldane.

There are long stretches of Schroeder, sitting behind what looks like an anchorman’s desk, lecturing an attentive Flew on matters like the unlikelihood that an infinite number of monkeys typing randomly would ever produce a Shakespearean sonnet.

(He is rebutting Stephen Hawking, who argues in “A Brief History of Time” that nature, given enough time, can perform the wondrous feats that credulous people attribute to God.) Schroeder also talks about the Cambrian explosion of animal species hundreds of millions of years ago, which he says happened too suddenly to lack some supernatural guidance. Haldane chimes in to argue that certain human capabilities, like language and reproduction, can be explained only by a higher intelligence....“Many of the greatest scientists of all time” believed that “the intelligence of the universe, its laws, points to an intelligence that has no limitation.”

[shrinkermd]

"...Flew was a precocious 27 when he delivered the paper at a meeting of the Socratic Club, the Oxford salon presided over by C. S. Lewis. Reprinted in dozens of anthologies, “Theology and Falsification” has become a heroic tract for committed atheists. In a masterfully terse thousand words, Flew argues that “God” is too vague a concept to be meaningful. For if God’s greatness entails being invisible, intangible and inscrutable, then he can’t be disproved — but nor can he be proved. Such powerful but simply stated arguments made Flew popular on the campus speaking circuit; videos from debates in the 1970s show a lanky man, his black hair professorially unkempt, vivisecting religious belief with an English public-school accent perfect for the seduction of American ears. Before the current crop of atheist crusader-authors — Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens — there was Antony Flew.

[M. Dodge Thomas]

“Although Flew still rejects Christianity, saying only that he now believes in “an intelligence that explains both its own existence and that of the world,”...”

[sodpoodle]

Another one just Flew out of the cuckoo’s nest!

[Southerngl]

He’s 81. I have always said people believe in God the closer and closer they get to having to meet Him.

[shield]

He’s gettin’ pretty old. If he continues to reject The Lord Jesus Christ...and unless something miraculous happens...yuk

[padre35]

An atheist finds a sort of truth, then denies the power therein?

A start, does Flew move the ball forward past acceptance?

[Gay State Conservative]

I’ll bet that it *killed* the Slimes to print this piece.

[paolop]

“...wondrous feats that credulous people attribute to God.” and “Haldane chimes in to argue ...”. What arrogant reporting- but then it *is* the NYT, whose reporters imbue ultimate truths upon joining the august institution. Credulous readers then adopt their beliefs, and chime in during political discourse.

[Viking2002]

I dismiss this as a deathbed CYA coming from an insufferable old humanist fart who is now counting down his date with a dirt nap on a stopwatch........

[camerakid400]

I really wish God would start acting like He did in the Old Testament and just give a real kick to the Muslims and atheist marxist liberals.

[BipolarBob]

He is the same. His ways are not our ways.

[SteveMcKing]

"Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe."

Then what makes miracles special? They are an intervention against nature after all. It would be as if God admitted making some kind of mistake in the universe He made.

Or is it a matter of degrees? Everything is one grand miracle, but miracles are especially.... miraculous.

Flew is a Deist, by my estimation. But only God can judge.

[jwalsh07]

Dinesh D'Sousa of late has come to the conclusion that the way to confront the anti-theists and atheists who have begun to evangelize their anti-theism is through reason rather than simply scripture.

Antony Flew arrived at his diesm, if it is indeed that, through reason, or so he tells us.

Perhaps Dinesh is on to something.

[stuartcr]

Then things must be the way He wants them.

[Melas]

Really? So when is the cutoff for belief?

[Star Traveler]

That kind of change happens when the Messiah sets up the Kingdom of God on this earth, for His 1,000 year reign. That doesn’t happen to be too far away, perhaps a few weeks, months or a few years. We’re real close now...

[freekitty]

Me too and you are going to be dead a lot longer than you are going to be alive.

[rbg81]

What caused the Big Bang, if not G-d? How can a universe appear out of a pin point of condensed matter? Further, the universe followed by ready made natural laws that enabled that boundless chaos to self organize into galaxies, solar systems, planets, life, and ultimately intelligence. If that is not evidence of G-d, I don’t know what is.

[boomop1]

The Angles are rejoicing another saved soul, glory to God in the Highest.

[Freedom'sWorthIt]

Am reading Dinesh’s book, “What’s So Great About Christianity” and was going to order Flew’s book next.