[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,”...”

[Southerngl]

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

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[Cacique]

ping

[NicknamedBob]

"... lecturing an attentive Flew on matters like the unlikelihood that an infinite number of monkeys typing randomly would ever produce a Shakespearean sonnet."

However unlikely it may seem, isn't this simply a matter of calculation?

How many monkeys would you have to have before the words "feed me" might appear? Or just "Help!"

Fewer, I'm sure. But if one has an infinite number of typists, the results must surely come about.

It could be Dan Brown's punishment in Hell to read through all that typing in order to find the Shakespearean Sonnet.

[GOP Poet]

bookmark

[azhenfud]

.

[13Sisters76]

This isn’t any big surprise. At 81 he MUST be wondering what comes next. It’s easy to be an “athiest” when you are young and “bulletproof”.

There HAS to come a time when everyone wonders what happens after we die. If the “athiests” are right- we die and that’s all. Everything we did, everything we were means nothing. If the “NewAgers” are right, we reincarnate or join some “universal conscienceness”...or something...

Christians are the only ones who believe we have to account for the choices we make and that we answer to Someone. I understand that can be scary. And Christianity IS the only faith that says we WILL pay for those choices. It’s tough to imagine that there is actually something, or Someone, more important than precious little you.

[VOA]

bump

[neverdem]

thanks, bfl

[snarks_when_bored]

After glancing at the comments on this thread, I'm wondering whether some of the commenters read the entire New York Times Magazine article on Antony Flew. The last few paragraphs indicate quite clearly that Flew is in a fairly advanced stage of mental decline (he's now 84 years old). The book recently published in his name was not written by him, and not only is he not conversant with the arguments of the authors mentioned in the book, he scarcely recognizes their names.

The reputation of this elderly English gentleman is being abused by younger men with ideological agendas. Not a pretty sight.