A review of "There is a God" by Antony Flew

A review of There Is a God. By Antony Flew.
HarperOne, 2007.In 2004 the atheist world was rocked by the news of one of the most important defections from its ranks in recent times. The world’s leading atheist, Antony Flew, announced that he was no longer an atheist, but a theist. This of course sent shock waves through the anti-theist camp, since they had long been claiming that rational and reasonable people only choose unbelief, whereas believers can only be regarded as stupid, gullible and deluded. It is pretty hard to describe Antony Flew in those terms.Indeed, given his credentials, this is an amazing book about an amazing intellectual about-face. For over 50 years Flew was the number one proponent of atheism. And as a world class scholar with over 30 books on philosophy in print, he was one of the twentieth century’s most imposing intellectual figures.In this book we hear about the reasons why he has abandoned atheism and embraced its counterpart. The significance of this turnaround can be seen in part by the ugly attacks and bitter responses by fellow atheists. They have made it perfectly clear that Flew has committed the unpardonable sin here. Their crude and ugly attacks on him and his decision is a telling commentary on the intellectual shallowness, bigoted fundamentalism, and narrow-minded intolerance that characterises so much of the new atheism.The first half of this book is a brief intellectual biography of Flew. Here we learn about how he was raised in a Christian home; his decision to embrace atheism at age 15; his career as a professional philosopher; his numerous important works on philosophy; his time as a Marxist; his encounters with such intellectual heavyweights as C.S. Lewis, A.J. Ayer, Gilbert Ryle, Wittgenstein, and others; his debates with Christian theists such as Lewis, Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, William Lane Craig; his debates with fellow atheists such as Richard Dawkins; and his six decades as a dogmatic atheist.The second half of the book deals with why he finally felt compelled to abandon his atheism and embrace theism. He offers three main reasons for his defection, (or apostasy, as many fellow atheists regard his move). The first bit of evidence he cites is the fact that nature obeys rational and ordered laws. The second is the fact that we are intelligently organised and purpose-driven beings. The third is the very existence of nature itself. The brute evidence of nature, in others words, has led Flew to recognise that “the universe was brought into existence by an infinite Intelligence”.He expands these three points in some detail, and demonstrates how any open-minded examination of recent scientific discoveries can only point in one direction: that matter alone is not all there is, and a supreme intelligence must be directing what we observe in nature.All the reasons offered in this book are based on an honest assessment of the evidence. Flew had made it a life habit to follow the command of Plato attributed to Socrates, “We must follow the argument wherever it leads”.Flew rightly complains that so many atheists are simply stuck in a narrow box, where prior faith commitments to naturalism preclude an honest evaluation of the evidence. It is so easy “to let preconceived theories shape the way we view evidence,” he says, “instead of letting the evidence shape out theories”. Flew’s willingness as an honest atheist to follow the evidence where it leads finally led him out of the barren sands of atheism into the refreshing oasis of theism.He notes that many leading scientists today “have built a philosophically compelling vision of a rational universe that sprang from a divine mind”. Eminent scientists and scientific thinkers such as Max Planck, Erwin Schrodinger, Werner Heisenberg, Paul Davies, Francis Collins, John Polkinghorne, Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking all acknowledge that there must be more to reality than what is offered in the materialist worldview.The various new discoveries - be they in astronomy, physics, cosmology, genetics or molecular biology - all demonstrate intelligence, purpose, order, design and complexity, the most obvious explanation of which is an intelligent designer.Flew of course takes on all the various challenges to such thinking, be it the multiverse scenarios, the functionalism of Dennett, Stenger’s notion of symmetry, or Dawkins’ idea of selfish genes. Concerning the last of these, Flew had long been a critique of this idea. “Genes, of course, can be neither selfish nor unselfish,” he says, “any more than they or any other nonconscious entities can engage in competition or make selections”. Indeed, natural selection “does not positively produce anything. It only eliminates, or tends to eliminate, whatever is not competitive”.Even though this is a brief book of just 200 pages, the cumulative case for the inadequacies of atheism and the necessity of theism is here very nicely and compellingly made. And given the one making the case - the world’s leading atheist for six decades - this book needs to be seriously read by everyone.Flew makes it clear that he is not a Christian - at least as yet - but is basically a deist. Deism says that there is a creator God, but such a God has no ongoing relationship with the created order - a bit like an absentee landlord. He says his journey to theism was based on reason alone, not faith, and he has yet to decide about revealed religion.He does inform us however that if he were to embrace a revelational religion, Christianity would be the best choice. Indeed, he finds the arguments for Christianity persuasive, and is now exploring the evidence for this as well. He is even impressed with the central truth claim of Christianity, the resurrection of Jesus. In fact, he allows New Testament scholar N.T. Wright to have a concluding chapter in this book, making the case for the resurrection.So as an honest seeker, he is more than willing to consider the claims of Christ. But for the honest atheist, this book offers a persuasive case for the claims of theism. As Roy Abraham Varghese argues in another appendix to this book, “we have all the evidence we need in our immediate experience” for theism, and the only reason why people remain in atheism is a refusal to look at this evidence.In this hugely important book Antony Flew challenges all of us - atheists especially - to honestly and sincerely examine the evidence, without preconceived biases and agendas. Genuine intellectual honesty demands that we indeed follow the evidence wherever it may lead.

Um...Flew is known to be suffering from age-related dementia, with the result that he is actually not the author of "There is a God", merely listed as author of a book by Varghese. So, yes, Flew was deluded - by Varghese, who manipulated a man of increasigly infirm mental condition into signing papers he didn't understand.So, you know, continue to hold up "There Is a God" as the best intellectual defense for belief in God that you have. The fact that the entire book is predicated on a despicable act of manipulative fraud only supports the atheist position. Page not found | ScienceBlogs

Here is a recent interview. This does not sound like a man with dementia.
http://www.tothesource.org/10_30_2007/10_30_2007.htmAnd another one from the BBC BBC - 404: Not Found Edited by GDR, : No reason given.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

Here's a commentary by Richard Carrier on this book. Carrier engaged in a discussion with Flew for a while, and so he is pretty familiar with Flew's point of view, his points in the arguement, and his style. Carrier points out that Flew actually had nothing to do with the book, and that this book, in fact, does not represent Flew's views at all.

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Computers have cut-and-paste functions. So does right-wing historical memory. -- Rick Perlstein

No, but this does:

quote:

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In "There Is a God," Flew quotes extensively from a conversation he had with Leftow, a professor at Oxford. So I asked Flew, "Do you know Brian Leftow?"

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"No," he said. "I don't think I do."

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"Do you know the work of the philosopher John Leslie?" Leslie is discussed extensively in the book.

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Flew paused, seeming unsure. "I think he's quite good." But he said he did not remember the specifics of Leslie's work.

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"Have you ever run across the philosopher Paul Davies?" In his book, Flew calls Paul Davies "arguably the most influential contemporary expositor of modern science."

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"I'm afraid this is a spectacle of my not remembering!"

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He said this with a laugh. When we began the interview, he warned me, with merry self-deprecation, that he suffers from "nominal aphasia," or the inability to reproduce names. But he forgot more than names. He didn't remember talking with Paul Kurtz about his introduction to "God and Philosophy" just two years ago. There were words in his book, like "abiogenesis," that now he could not define. When I asked about Gary Habermas, who told me that he and Flew had been friends for 22 years and exchanged "dozens" of letters, Flew said, "He and I met at a debate, I think." I pointed out to him that in his earlier philosophical work he argued that the mere concept of God was incoherent, so if he was now a theist, he must reject huge chunks of his old philosophy. "Yes, maybe there's a major inconsistency there," he said, seeming grateful for my insight.

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This interview, incidentally, is much more recent than the one you post. Anybody who has known someone suffering from dementia knows that they have good days and bad; clearly Varghese waited for one of Flew's bad days.In all honesty it's all irrelevant. The arguments in the book are trash; they're the same stuff atheists have already refuted. That the best they could do was convince an old man with a degenrating mental illness doesn't particularly speak to their veracity.Nobody had ever even heard of Flew until his last supposed "conversion", which also turned out to be an act of fraud by believers taking advantage of a very old and occasionally very confused man. The whole episode really speaks to the dishonesty required to defend religious belief.

The title of this thread makes it appear that you think you are posting a review of this book. Yet, HarperOne, who you reference for your OP, is the website of HarperCollins, the publisher of the book. Are you confusing an advertising blurb by the people promoting the book as an impartial "review"?

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Computers have cut-and-paste functions. So does right-wing historical memory. -- Rick Perlstein

According to Carrier, that's because the book was actually written by a fundy Christian apologist who just put Flew's name on the cover.

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Computers have cut-and-paste functions. So does right-wing historical memory. -- Rick Perlstein

One of the interviews I posted was with the BBC.The conclusions that he came to regarding theism happened a few years back prior to any age related difficulties he may or may not be having.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

So why his denial, last year, that he was anything but an atheist, and that his supposed "conversion" had simply been at the hands of the believers who had manipulated him?You guys have been targeting this poor old guy for years, now. It'd disguesting and you should be ashamed for being a part of it.

You seem to be missing the point. The post to which you are replying is pointing out that you are referencing the publisher of the book for a description of how important this book is.The other point, in the other posts which I wrote, describes how nothing in this book matches Flew's style, so that he couldn't have possibly written it himself (and, in fact, it's clear that he didn't), and that none of the arguments in the book bear any resemblence to any of the arguments used by Flew, so Flew's ideas clearly weren't even used by this book.Whether or not Flew is going senile is not quite relevant to my point that the book is basically a fraud. Although, now that you bring it up, if Flew isn't going senile, then one has to wonder why he signed his name to a book that he didn't write, didn't contribute to, nor even read, nor why he doesn't seem to know anything about it. What's your guess?

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Computers have cut-and-paste functions. So does right-wing historical memory. -- Rick Perlstein

Rocked, were we? Very dramatic language, GDR. I was indifferent. Edited by bluegenes, : Forgot to put text in - the A. Flew syndrome, perhaps.

Where is the link to that?As often happens on this forum the way to refute an argument is to attack the individual. He's senile - He's maniupulted - etc.You vcan and will disagree with these points but they certainly sound like the views of a rational man to me.

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Everybody is entitled to my opinion.

I certainly knew next to nothing about him until this conversion stuff started. This world's best known atheist stuff is publicity blurb for the book. In fact, I suspect that he gained more notoriety for some controversial political views than he did fame for any of his philosophical views.

Heh. Would anyone even have heard of Anthony Flew if it weren't for the evangelical propaganda machine?

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Computers have cut-and-paste functions. So does right-wing historical memory. -- Rick Perlstein

Odd to start noticing those things at age 80, don't you think? A philosopher? They are certainly not new and original points.