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

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

No, but this does:

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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.

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.

Where's the link? We talked about it at this very forum. Heck, wasn't it you who started the topic, back then? When you present an argument from authority, as you did - "Flew's conversion should convince atheists because he's a reasonable person who used to be an atheist" - then it's entirely reasonable to rebut that argument by showing the "authority" to be no authority at all. The list doesn't even sound like it was written by a reasonable man. "Flew's has three different arguments, and they're nature, design in nature, and nature." I mean, what?At any rate, we know that these aren't even Flew's arguments, so what's your point?

No, I actually think the fact that theism can only be defended by behaving in the most dishonest possible manner - or by refusing to defend it at all - is quite germane. GDR seems to think that this book is a blow against atheism, but it simply highlights the well-funded, well-coordinated attack machine that considers no tactic too underhanded in the fight against free thought.Or, you know, something like that. Believers acting like assholes because the mere existence of atheists threatens them. What the hell else is new?

If the arguments are so great, why couldn't Varghese have simply made them under his own name? Why was he, apparently, so ashamed of them that he had to fraudulently ascribe them to a completely unrelated person?I just don't understand the dishonesty. It's characteristic of things that are true that you don't have to lie to convince people. I don't know what you think you're talking about.Is any disagreement an insult to a believer like you? It must be.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

I was talking about Varghese, not you.

A national newspaper conducted an interview with a man who couldn't remember a single person he either worked with or drew from in writing his book? What's suspect about that? The only suspicion it raises is the suspicion that a senile man was manipulated to put his name on a book he didn't have any involvement in. Of course it was lucid, Varghese wrote it for him. How do you know? Did you see him write it? For instance, the evidence that a few weeks later, Flew can't remember a single detail from the book, nor recall working with any of the sources he supposedly drew from, nor explain why he was apparently convinced by the exact same arguments he's demolished in the past.And, of course, there's the little matter of his previous false "conversion", which of course turned out to be a complete fabrication by believers.What's your evidence that Flew was involved with this book? Does he have any of the notes from writing it, for instance? The investigation of a national newspaper is insufficient to you? I guess I don't understand. If you already assume that God exists, then assuming that God exists isn't a step at all; you're already there. Because Einstein and Spinoza were atheists. "Spinoza's God" is atheism with a candy coating. In Spinoza's time it was the most atheist you could be without being persecuted by the church. Nobody's flaming Flew; we're attacking Varghese for manipulating a senile old man. That he is grappling with senility is abundantly obvious from his interviews. That he didn't write "There Is a God" is abundantly obvious from the quality of the work.

Oh, for God's sake. Who told you that? Fox News? This conversation is from more than two years ago - and after the interview with the BBC, he repudiated his supposed "conversion" and announced that it had all been his misunderstanding of the actual science behind his claims.Theist? Atheist? Flew's position seems to depend on whose doing the asking. That's not consistent with someone operating from a sound frame of mind. Indeed - to the extent that Roy Varghese authored a book of shoddy arguments for God and then manipulated Flew into agreeing to be named as author.You're just proving our point, NJ.

You mean, kind of like Mother Theresa did.Yeah, I didn't exactly see the Catholics turning from their faith in droves.

I don't see what that has to do with atheism. Never mind, of course, that the Times was one of the loudest cheerleaders in the rush to war with Iraq, and they've continued in that vein in their relentless warmongering against Iran.If you think that the NYT simply made up the interview with Flew, then it's really you who needs to show some evidence for that. Which he later repudiated. You don't remember? We talked about it here at this very forum.Back and forth between theism and atheism. For the "world's greatest atheist" he sure flip-flops on the issue.Almost like it depends on who he's talking to. Almost like he can't remember what he's supposed to be, so he just says what he senses will make the person in front of him happy. You know, like people with Alzheimer's or senility usually do. Except that he demolished those very arguments in his previous books. It beggars belief that he would suddenly be convinced by them now, unless he's not of sound mind. That, despite being the supposed "author" of this book, he doesn't seem to have any memory of ever having wrote it. That's pretty significant, isn't it?Do you have any evidence that he's the author of the book attributed to him? It's abundantly obvious that he is the sole author, and that Flew contributed nothing but his name. And that, probably, unwillingly. No. It simply beggars belief that a person of sound mind would be convinced by the very same arguments they've consistently and accurately refuted.I couldn't care less about what Flew believes. But the way that theists have been gunning for the guy like he's some kind of trophy is reprehensible and shameful. The guy has a body of work, his whole life, and Varghese is destroying it.

If you've never read the NY Times, NJ, maybe you shouldn't make sweeping statements about "liberal bias." Because people regularly experience cognitive difficulties as they reach advanced age? Is that something you contend is uncommon? About people with cognitive problems answering questions in the way they think the interlocutor wants them to be answered? You can confirm that from any case study of these illnesses.That Flew is doing it? It's sufficient to read the NY Times article. If you think that Flew was able to achieve incredible feats of memory that Oppenheimer simply didn't choose to report, I'll need to see some evidence for that claim. What did you write to him, if I may ask? He doesn't seem lucid at all. Boy, between you and Bill Frist (who so famously "diagnosed" Terri Shiavo from a video tape with cognitive abilities it was impossible for her to have) you'd see lucidity and cognition in a stone. Oh, I'm not disagreeing that the trash arguments of theism are nonetheless able to convince; we wouldn't be so concerned about logical fallacies if the fallacies didn't weren't so misleadingly intuitive. It turns out it's not all that hard to convince someone with bad reasoning.None of that establishes the existence of God, or that Varghese isn't a reprehensible asshole. Is it just that you don't know any seniors? There's a reason why seniors are so universally targeted by flim-flam artists and conmen; they're not so quick, they tend to be trusting of people who seem confident and authorative, and they tend to have more assets than they can remember, so they don't always miss the loss.Varghese is little more than a common conman. Why is it so unusual to imagine that he was able to manipulate a senile old man into doing something as trivial as signing a piece of paper? If Flew wrote the book why doesn't he seem to remember anything about it? Excommunicated from what, precisely? Which friends?Specifics, please.