C.S. Lewis, one of the most prolific Christian writers, was also a staunch athiest at one time, but he was never a prolific athiest writer like Flew. I am going to get Flew’s “conversion” book, should be very inteesting reading.
Is that a new FR code word? I can't keep up. :^)
From the editorial review on Amazon:
Like Mr. Buckley, Patrick Glynn is a Christian who has written a book about his faith. But his is a very different journey-from faith to agnosticism and finally back to faith again. As he puts it: "This book had its origins in a spiritual reawakening-or to put the situation somewhat less philosophical atheist or agnostic, I finally realized that there was in fact a God."
Mr. Glynn, the product of a secular Harvard education roughly 25 years after Mr. Buckley was at Yale, is a former arms-controller and now a professor at George Washington University. In "God: The Evidence" he sets out in layman's language the scientific evidence for the existence of God. This is a monumental and ultimately impossible task-no one can reason his way to faith-but Mr. Glynn's review of the scientific literature is compelling.
His thesis is that the scientific discoveries of the past 25 years, especially in the physical sciences, have refuted the idea of a "random universe"-the modern idea that human life was a chance event-in favor of the "anthromorphic principle": the idea that there is an intelligent guiding hand at work. The phrase "anthromorphic principle" was coined by Brandon Carter, a Cambridge University physicist and cosmologist, at a seminal 1973 lecture in Krakow, Poland, where the world's greatest scientific thinkers had gathered to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the birth of Copernicus. He argued that the long list of mysterious coincidences inexplicable to students of the origins of the universe share one common denominator: All were necessary for the creation of human life, thus implying a creation by design.
Carter was by no means alone in these God-friendly views. His lecture was inspired by ideas that were just then beginning to percolate in scientific circles and that took off afterward. Mr. Glynn summarizes a host of these ideas, among them those of astronomer Fred Hoyle, progenitor of the "big bang," who once said: "An explosion in a junkyard does not lead to sundry bits of metal being assembled into a useful working machine."
Mr. Glynn devotes a chapter to the science of psychology, reviewing studies that show a correlation between religious belief and mental health-in contrast to Freud's view of religion as a childish illusion in need of correction. Elsewhere, he looks at the growing body of literature on near-death experience, which he believes offer evidence of an afterlife.
Underlying Mr. Glynn's analyses is one crucial point, which is that Western intellectual life is undergoing a huge shift: It is finding room for God. Until very recently the history of modern scientific thought-Galileo, Darwin, Freud-pointed away from religion toward a secular world view. Now, the "God hypothesis" is gaining ground; and for the first time since the heretic Galileo appeared before the Inquisition, science and faith aren't on a collision course.
End review. I found the book fascinating, although some of the physics parts were beyond what little knowledge I have in that subject.