What if a highly respected, well-known, Oxford-educated, atheist philosopher changed his mind, late in his career, and decided that he, now, believed in God?

You say, "Well, he would probably write a book with this kind of sub-title: `How The World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind.'"

You're right. And that brings us to Antony Flew's book and this review.

This book is a little bit autobiography and a good bit of philosophy with a little bit of the philosophy of science. (It's everything I can do to resist some kind of reference to: it's "a little bit country" and "a little bit rock and roll".)

Flew provides a good bit of information about his background, and this helps the reader see the larger context of his life. I found this to be interesting.

To those of us who believe in God there is great satisfaction in the fact that Flew stresses, numerous times, that one of his guiding intellectual values has long been to follow the evidence wherever it leads. And "the evidence" has led him to this conclusion: "I now believe there is a God! So there!"

Alright, if you look in the book the "So there!" part isn't really included in the text. But, in my imagination, it's a nice little shot.

Flew provides his evidence for belief in God and makes a good argument.

It is also interesting and satisfying to theists that Flew credits recent scientific advances as a significant factor in his opinion regarding the existence of God. This is satisfying to theists because sometimes belief in God is portrayed as an entirely unwarranted; blind leap of faith; embraced by uneducated people--usually wearing no shoes or socks; with no rational basis whatsoever.

Since I'm a Christian, I found another line in the book to be quite pleasing. Flew says about Christianity, "If you're wanting Omnipotence to set up a religion, this is the one to beat."

I know, I know, atheists and non-Christians will find that to be ridiculous and aggravating. But, it's still true that he wrote it. So there!

The book has two interesting appendices, one written by Roy Abraham Varghese, who is the co-writer of the book and one written by Bishop N.T. Wright. Bishop Wright's essay on "The Self-Revelation of God in Human History" is outstanding.

Dan Marler
Oak Lawn, IL

Anthony Flew. It was a name that so many either looked up to or reviled, depending on where you stood on the God vs. Atheist debate. Here was an atheistic scholar, stubborn as all get out, who had made one of the greatest impacts in his field during the latter half of the 20th century atheism. Then, after seeing more and more evidence come forth that chipped away at his position, he shocked the world (in 2004) by announcing that he no longer disbelieved in a god. Rather, as he talks about in the book, he moved over to a more Deistic position, even though he still rejects a personal god and miracles such as the resurrection.

And how the Atheists howled, as it is obvious from the blogosphere and reviews of this book on Amazon as well. Funny how things change. Regardless of which side you find yourself, reading this book is worthwhile because of its historical significance. It certainly is deeper in nature, and you have to have your philosopher's hat on, but Flew's perspective is certainly worth considering. Co-author Roy Abraham Varghese adds an appendix where he critiques the New Atheists such as Dawkins and Co., and there is a wonderful section in the appendix written by British scholar N.T. Wright. It's well stated and is also worth the price of admission.

Again, I suggest reading it for yourself, so I'll stop here. Let me add to the atheists who love to add comments to the reviews that I don't have time to play silly games writing back and forth in meaningless dialog that gets nowhere. I rarely check my reviews and see who's left what, so please don't be disappointed if I don't respond. I have people to see, things to do, and a life to live. Oh, and I've got shelves of books I am having a hard time getting to! Perhaps some of the complainers ought to write a self-published rebuttal that they will be able to sell to their friends (and very few others).

Those who claim that Flew doesn't address his own atheistic arguments and the even more outlandish claim that he didn't write most of the book are missing the point completely. The point of the book is not to give a point by point refutation of his previous works. It gives an overview of some of the works that lead Flew to his conversion. Through out the book, Flew talks about the books and other works that influenced his decision to convert, such as The Coherence of Theism by Swinburne, which the interested reader must then study. Flew mentions these works while sharing his personal testimony, and that is the purpose of this book.

For those who are familiar with Anthony Flew and his work, this should be a very interesting book. Flew is a renowned philosopher who, for most of his life, argued clearly and (for many) persuasively against the existence of God. This book is the story of how he changed his mind and came to believe that God must exist. Flew's influence among atheists has been so strong that many of them have been scandalized by his change of mind. Some have gone so far at to allege that Flew did not write this book, is suffering from some sort of dementia (because of his age), and is being taken advantage of by others. I think that there is very little reason to believe these accusations unless you have a strong vested interest in atheism. An internet search on Flew's name and words like "dementia" or reading the other reviews on Amazon.com and the comments on them will give you details of the controversy.

The book is well written for the general reader and more of a story of Flew's intellectual journey than an apologetic work. In the first appendix, Roy Varghese responds directly to Flew's atheist critics. There is also a second appendix written by N. T. Wright giving a very interesting summary of his Christian approach to the question of how God reveals himself in the form of a human being who is resurrected after death. Flew does not seem committed to Christianity but says that Wright's approach is absolutely fresh and impressive. I agree. I highly recommend this book.

There have been some hysterical and ill-informed postings on various atheist blogs and websites about Antony Flew's rejection of atheism, and particularly his recent book There is a God (co-authored and edited by Roy Abraham Varghese - Harper One, 2007). Suggestions have been made that Flew is now senile and being exploited by Christians. 'Don't read this book!' shouts one atheistical blogger. Well, I have read the book, and I find it lucid and compelling. Much of it has been compiled by Varghese from Flew's published and unpublished writings and interviews, but every page has been checked and signed off by Flew himself, as he has made perfectly clear in print. I personally found some of Varghese's short editorial links a bit off for their jarring Americanisms, but they seem not to have bothered Flew. There are two appendices: one by Varghese himself and the other by Bishop Tom Wright, to whom I incidentally owe my own reconsideration of Christian claims. Both are excellent. Some critics have made a fuss about the cringe-making subtitle of the book, but that does not seriously detract from its value. I'm sure it was not Flew's choice, and I doubt that Varghese was responsible. Blame the publisher!

Two things can be added: firstly, Flew's dissatisfaction with Dawkins is long-standing. In Darwinian Evolution, published in 1984 when he was still a Vice President of the Rationalist Press Association (RPA), Flew described The Selfish Gene as a "major exercise in popular mystification", adding "Dawkins labours to discount or depreciate the main upshot of fifty or more years work in genetics" and he gives examples of this trend. In a further passage, Flew agrees with some trenchant criticisms of the book previously made by philosopher Mary Midgley (Gene Juggling, in Philosophy, October 1979 - see also her Selfish Genes and Social Darwinism in Philosophy for 1983). These paragraphs have been largely included in There is a God, showing that Flew's rejection of Dawkins's Selfish Gene hypothesis, echoed by many scientists and philosophers since it was first published, is not a new departure, but a long-standing, widely-shared and well-founded objection. They expose the fundamental flaws in Dawkins's theory, which undermine almost everything he has written since. His central dogma that "we are survival machines - robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes" removes any possibility of personal responsibility - for anything. We are simply the puppets of our genes. What a perfect excuse for all malefactors, including child rapists and murderers like Ian Brady, Ian Huntley and Roy Whiting: "It was them genes what dunnit, Guv!" An excuse, perhaps: but hardly a comfort. Dawkins was properly rebuked on Irish television when he said: "I'm not interested in freewill." How could there be any such thing in his worldview?

A second point: Barry Duke, editor of Britain's atheist monthly 'The Freethinker', has informed me by email that he has met Antony Flew (presumably some time back - he doesn't say) and he insists - without giving any reasons - "The man's an idiot". It would be interesting to know whether this opinion is based on Flew's views and writings while he was still a Vice President of the RPA, and the most prominent atheist philosopher in Britain, or whether it is a knee-jerk reaction, based on Flew's more recent rejection of the atheism which he had espoused for almost half a century. Well, I can tell you, dear readers, that I have also met Antony Flew (only once, in 1996 at an Oxford conference where we each presented a paper, and then socialised afterwards), and I have also read - over a 40 year period - practically all his published work. I can assure you that the man was not an idiot then, and neither is he an idiot now; though his memory, at 84, is admittedly not what it was. I was, incidentally, a Director of the RPA from 1989 to 1998, as well as (briefly) President of the National Secular Society (1996-97).

This book is mostly a narrative account of the process that Antony Flew followed first to become an atheist, and then to become a believer in God. It even has an appendix chapter by a Christian apologist discussing philosophical reasons for belief in Jesus. Flew admits he does not go that far, but he is open as he has shown, to changing his mind.

The book is unusual on many levels. Not many people make drastic, even 180 degree changes in core philosophy past their twenties, much less into their eighties. Most people are pretty well set in their ways by that eightieth birthday or so. It is also remarkable because of the notoriety of Flew as a philosopher; he's not just some guy flipping pizzas who suddenly heard a voice- he's a guy who's thought about this a lot and for a long time. Finally it's remarkable just from the sheer span of years the history covers. Much of Flew's academic life overlapped with Lewis and other well known philosophers of bygone eras, but has continued right up to the present. The book explains some philosophy, not on any overly intricate level, but more as a complement to personal history where most of the philosophy is detailed only to the level necessary to explain his extraordinary change of view.

One thing probably bothering many reviewers is the ghost writer, but after all Flew is 84, and certainly isn't the first person, young or old, to have a writer. The other thing is probably the fact that a lot of the new developments in microbiology along with some of the work from Intelligent Design had a big (although not necessarily primary) role in Flew's metamorphosis.

I enjoyed much of the charm that carried over from his era. For instance he describes the courtship of his wife, noting that he never attempted to seduce her before marriage. I smiled at how arcane that sounded, although it was a sad, bittersweet smile.

In summary, the philosophical arguments in this book are meant to be illustrative more than comprehensive, but they are well written and worthwhile. The more important point is the life itself, and I hope that it is still a work in progress. In any case, it's a remarkable story and a remarkable life.

Never having encountered a book by the "world's most assertive astrophysicist" nor one by the "world's zaniest zoologist", Flew's subtitle came as something novel. Compounded by the fact that i'd never heard of him - my not being a scholar in "atheism" - it would have been easy to pass this by as a crank's production. However, at the insistence of some respected colleagues, i was impelled to give it a look. It's difficult to impart what a stunning waste of time this little tome proved to be.

It's bad form to chide a man's account of his own life. After all, he's the one who lived it. However, even his account of his early life exhibits some glaring omissions. Raised by a Methodist family - his father was a Cambridge tutor in the sect - Antony went off to a boys' school for his secondary education. There, as a "unenthusiastic Christian", his faith eroded away - mostly due to the "wearying ritual" he encountered at Chapel. That's it. No other fundamental reason is given for his atheism, which he successfully concealed from his parents for many years. After some erratic efforts to become a philosophical scholar, Flew produced a paper, "Theology and Falsification", upon which he built his career. The "Falsification" bit was supposed to indicate his interest in science, and his desire to follow where the evidence might lead. If the remainder of the book is any indication, somebody changed the pointers along the track and Flew arrived at some never-never land.

As a "philosopher", of course, Flew need not be held to a fixed position once taken. He recounts his readings in philosophy and the encounters he had with notable people in the field. None of it, however, is used to expound on his self-professed lack of faith. Issues of gods, the universe, life or the world, never arise in this account. At least not until he attempts to explain his "conversion" - which is a bumbling failure.

To open his segment on "My Discovery of the Divine", Flew provides an update of Paley's "watch on the heath" concept, in this case with a satellite 'phone! From this, he works up a succession of ancient, weary arguments about Nature exhibiting "design" - Paley's contention, which Darwin ably dismissed over a century ago. Flew, apparently, has not caught up with the times. Worse, Flew also adopts Paley's notion of Nature's organisms having evolved for a "purpose". If ever an argument has been dispelled by science, teleology stands high in ranking. It's astounding to see anybody propose that fallacy in these times.

Along with these gaffes, Flew actually dredges up the old comparison about the odds of life emerging from material processes with the "monkeys typing the works of Shakespeare" fallacy. No greater misunderstanding of evolutionary biology could be displayed. There are those who claim that Flew was entering dementia when this book was written. While that remains unproveable, his lack of knowledge in fields relating to his arguments is glaring. Yet, he has no problem with out-of-context or irrelevant quotes being sprinkled throughout the text. His mental state is of no consequence, but it would have been kinder to himself and unsuspecting readers to have kept this empty dissertation under wraps. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

I have heard Antony Flew's name many times over the years, because every time that I would read about a Christian apologist, it seemed that Antony Flew's name would come up as his atheist antagonist. So you can imagine my surprise when I opened my newspaper in December 2004 and read the news that Antony Flew had changed his mind and decided that he DID believe in God. What a Christmas gift to the Christian world! But what it really true? I later read that while Flew now believes in God, he has not accepted Christianity. I wondered, what caused this change, and where was he now in his thinking?
Thus I read Flew's new book There Is A God, with great interest to know what caused such an outspoken atheist scholar to change his mind. I was not disappointed.
While the book is only 160 pages (plus two appendices by other authors), it is thorough and deep in its content. Flew tells his own story of how he, the son of a Methodist minister in Britain, became an atheist out of disillusionment with how God could allow evil, particularly as he saw the atrocities in Nazi Germany in World War II. Flew went on to become a professor of philosophy and a writer of many influential books espousing atheism, teaching in universities in Great Britain, Canada, and finally in the United States, where he now resides. He followed the thinking of skeptics like David Hume, arguing that we must presume atheism is true and believers must prove there is a God.
So how did this atheist scholar convert to theism? Flew explains that one belief he has always held led to the change-- his belief in the words of Socrates: "We must follow the argument wherever it leads." (p. 22). As he debated and argued the issues with Christians, he gradually changed his mind as he "followed the argument" for three basic reasons, which form three of the chapters of the book:
1) The laws of nature indicate they were designed by the Mind of God. Flew quotes Paul Davies: "even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith the existence of a lawlike order in nature" (p. 107).
2) The finely-tuned universe that delicately balances life indicates it was designed by a Creator for us. He points out, for example, that if the speed of light or the mass of an electron had been the slightest degree different, then no planet would be capable of human life (p. 115).
3) The origin of life itself, with the amazingly complex communication systems of DNA cannot be explained by materialistic evolution, and only make sense if designed by God.
In addition to these three major reasons, Flew also cites the big-bang theory as scientific evidence that the universe had a beginning (p. 136). As for the problem of evil, Flew leaves the question open, but prefers the popular Christian explanation that "evil is always a possibility if human beings are truly free" (p. 156).
So has Antony Flew become a Christian? The best answer is not yet, but he is leaning that way. He says, "I am entirely open to learning more about the divine" (p. 156) and then he expresses his admiration for the person of Jesus Christ and the intellect of the apostle Paul, saying that if you want an omnipotent God "to set up a religion, it seems to me that this is the one to beat!" (p. 157).
The book has an appendix by Roy Abraham Varghese, giving a critique of the "new atheism" of bold writers such as Richard Dawkins. Appendix A is good, but even better is Appendix B by N. T. Wright, which explains why we should believe in Jesus Christ. Wright convincingly argues for belief in the authenticity of the Gospel accounts of the resurrection of Jesus Christ in a way that impresses Flew himself as "absolutely fresh." (p. 213).
I would agree. As much as I enjoyed Flew's book, I must say that Appendix B by N.T. Wright was worth the price of the book. My prayer is that Antony Flew will finally follow the argument of Wright as it leads him to embrace the claims of Jesus Christ on his life.

Philosipher Anthony Flew has written a very interesting book describing his conversion to deism. While I still would highly disagree with the man since I believe in a personal Christian God, I really enjoyed the book. It was particullarly useful that Flew was able to give overviews of his previous arguements in a generally popular, brief fassion and then eplain why he has changes his opinions on either the process or the conclusion. His personal story was interesting as well. There were two appendixes to Flew's book. The first is by Roy Abraham Varhees (spelling?) and gives some of his philosophical opinions against the "New Atheism". The second was more interesting to myself as it presented some of the views of theologian and historian N.T. Wright. Personally, I think Wright better expressed himself in his book with Borg (largely due to more space to write of course) but I enjoy hearing Wright's views even if I don't always agree with him. Overall, I found the book a good read.

I read and admired David Alexander's review (Nov. 19, 2007). But he makes one serious mistake, identifying Elizabeth Anscombe as an "atheist philosopher". Consult Wikipedia and learn that she was a deeply committed Roman Catholic who suffered a lot for her faith but whom many considered the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century. Go ahead, look it up; Google it. Her debate against C. S. Lewis was occasioned by her dissatisfaction with Lewis's argument against atheism; she wanted it stronger. So did Lewis after she finished with him!!

I read and admired David Alexander's review. But he makes one serious mistake, identifying Elizabeth Anscombe as an "atheist philosopher". Consult Wikipedia and learn that she was a deeply committed Roman Catholic who suffered a lot for her faith but whom many considered the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century. Go ahead, look it up; Google it. Her debate against C. S. Lewis was occasioned by her dissatisfaction with Lewis's argument against atheism; she wanted it stronger. So did Lewis after she finished with him!!

For the majority of his adult life Anthony Flew was an atheist and only recently came to the conclusion that there has to be a God. His logic is impressive and makes arguments for atheism seem childish. Flew writes for other philosophers and if you aren't one, or have not read other philosophic writings, this book can take some time to fully understand.

Flew has not converted to any organized religion since acknowledging the existence of a God, nor does his perception of God fit neatly into the commonly held religious beliefs. What the book points out is that there had to be some supernatural force behind the creation of the universe. It is excellent reading.

Not a comment on the book content, but rather the title.

Only someone hell-bent on making this book appeal to the masses could call Flew "the world's most notorious atheist".

Flew was an academic analytic philosopher. Most people don't even have a poor idea (much less a good one) of what analytic philosophy is or who the philosophers within this tradition are.

If we're counting historical thinkers, I'd say Bertrand Russell would be a far more notorious atheist. Or Nietzsche. Or Marx.

If we're counting only contemporary thinkers, I'd say Richard Dawkins has a much better claim to this title.

So, for those thinking about buying this book, don't let the title fool you. The book probably has a lot of good content in it, but don't buy it because you want to hear about the conversion of the kingpin of atheism. Flew is not that.

I am amazed at Christians who get all excited that a scientific
man has embrased some kind of "deism", like Thomas Paine who wrote the "Age of Reason" and argued that the god of the bible was more like a demon then anything. According to Orthodox Christianity, such a man is destined for everlasting hell. So, how does Flew help the Christian cause? Where is his proof that god exists? Is it found in probabilities? Let's say that there is some cause to pause and say there could be some kind of designer. Is it the god of the bible, whom science has completely demolished? Is the designer Allah, some Hindu god, etc? I think if we dissect each god there wouldn't be one left standing. So, if there is a Deistic kind of god, so what? What does he/it have to say to us? NOTHING! The only thing that matters is us. Life is what you make it and the best way to be happy is to understand our own psychological make up and 'do what thou wilt'. Even more fundamental to the discussion is what it means to use the term god. What is a god and how would you know one if you came accross one? I lost my faith because when I think of a god I come up with a blank. There is no substance to the word 'god'. If you mearly mean a 'creator' then you ascribe to him some kind of action but have no clue as to the properties of this suposed being. You can substitute the word god for just about anything and it will only make slightly more since then useing the empty word god.
And then there are the idiots who when discussing this matter talk of this as if it were of eternal importance/consequence. So, this is circular because we are supposed to start with fear of our eternal well-being before we contemplate the matter before us with reason. So, we are kinda supposing this 'god' and the fact that he wishes to torment us for being on the wrong side of the fence, before we analyse any data to conclude whether or not there is this 'creator' terrorist. Wow, and you wonder why the "new atheists" are polemic in nature? Theism, in general, is scary business!

It's the rare intellectual--and especially the rare philosopher (I speak as a member of that strange tribe, by the way)--who's courageous enough to publicly admit error. In his old age, Augustine famously penned a series of Retractions that pruned and corrected his earlier writings. The twentieth century philosopher Wittgenstein eventually repudiated his first work, the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. But for every Augustine and Wittgenstein, there are scores of philosophers who become wedded to their systems and simply can't bring themselves to doubt--much less repudiate--cherished conclusions.

That's one reason why Antony Flew's There Is a God is a remarkable work. Whether or not one buys his argument, one can't but admire his insistence on "following the argument where it leads," a bit of Socratic advice which Flew has made his professional motto, even when it leads him to reject positions he earlier championed. The positions which he now rejects are, specifically, that there is no God; that causation is best understood in Humean terms; and that compatibilism is the best way to navigate the free will/determinism debate.

Flew's purpose in There Is a God is to present arguments for his new conclusion that there's evidence to suppose the existence of a divine First Cause. Ultimately, his point is that in the absence of a God, one must settle for mystifying and implausible conceptual leaps. His critics might say that he's simply appealing to a "God of the gaps" move, and perhaps they're correct. But Flew would respond by challenging them to explain, in non-question begging ways, (1) why nature is lawlike (did laws emerge, or did they have to be existent for cosmological events to occur in the first place?), (2) how end-directed and self-replicating life emerged from matter (Flew accepts a neo-Aristotelian understanding of telos), and (3) how nature itself came into being (why is there something rather than nothing?). These, Flew argues, are the types of questions that must be addressed philosophically. Cosmological and biological data are relevant in their investigation, but the questions themselves can't be adequately answered by addressing them as "hows," but rather only as "whys."

Flew's book has generated an enormous amount of heated and sometimes ugly controversy. The militant New Atheists, led by Richard Dawkins, claim that Flew is senile and that the book was ghost written by Roy Abraham Varghese. Christians insist that the book shows that Flew has converted to their faith. Flew, while acknowledging that he's old and that Varghese did much of the actual writing, insists that the book contains his own ideas. To Christian enthusiasts, he insists that he's a deist rather than a theist, and that he hasn't converted to Christianity. How unfortunate that the current theism/atheism debate has become so polemical and recriminatory that all sides have great difficulty following the argument where it leads with civility and grace. The goal seems to be winning a debate rather than discovering truth.

I remember seeing the headlines in late 2004/early 2005. One of the world's most famous atheists, Anthony Flew, had declared his belief in "a God". This was a major coup for the theists in the atheism versus theism battle. So, when I saw the book "There Is No A God" had been published, I had to get it. I had to see what new evidence had persuaded one of the most prominent philosophers of our time. Anthony Flew was an atheist for more than 60 years. He spent time debating Christian apologists (including presenting papers to C.S. Lewis. You may know that C.S. Lewis was, at one time a pretty staunch atheist before he became of the best known apologists for Christianity. I want to know what makes men like that tick; men who are willing to completely change their views on something as critical on whether or not there is a God based on reason and logic.

The subtitle of the book is "How the world's most notorious atheist changed his mind". The book begins at the beginning- talking about Flew's youth, his days in school and what led him to being an atheist in the first place. His father was a minister. So, he did not start off as an atheist. But, in his teens he had already decided there was no God. The book takes through his formation as an atheist and the reasoning that led him there. Early on in life, he decided to "follow the evidence wherever it may lead", which is a Socratic principle. When I made that commitment to myself a couple of decades ago, I didn't know it was a Socratic principle. But, I decided that I would pursue truth above all else, even if it led me away from Christianity. It's fascinating that the same commitment that led Flew away from being a theist over 60 years later brought him right back.

The book is written in language a layperson can understand. I've struggled to read some philosophers as they speak their own language and even seem to use their own logic. However, Flew and his co-author Roy Varghese speak in language the common man can understand. Flew's "religion" would probably be called Deism. He is not a Christian, even though he has acknowledged that the Christian argument for revealed religion is probably stronger than any other. Flew's religion is not "revealed" and is not based on either faith or personal experience. He came to the conclusion that there is a God simply based on logic/reason/philosophy although recent scientific discoveries (including the Big Bang theory) certainly helped. Actually, the core of Flew's argument, IMO is the fact that there is something rather than nothing. He goes on to talk about the fact that there seems to be a goal or a design to life, talks about the rising of the living from the non-living and the intelligent from the supposedly non-intelligent. In each case, he tells why materialism/atheism simply doesn't work to answer the questions that a simple acknowledgment of a Creator answers. IMO just the fact that there is something rather than nothing means that there has always been something because every effect must have a cause. Nothing exists completely independently of everything else. Materialists choose to believe the universe has always existed and have come up with some fanciful and intellectually dishonest ways of explaining how something can come from "nothing" (like "nothing" is unstable and kind of decays into "something") or the multiverse theory which attempts to explain the fine-tuning of the universe with the theory that there are an infinite or almost infinite number of universes. I've actually come to the conclusion it takes a lot more faith to be a true atheist (as opposed to an agnostic) than it takes to be a "believer". Some philosophers get themselves so twisted up that they begin to doubt the existence of their very selves and their own minds. As one philosopher said to another in the book some of their theories don't really require refutation. If they actually believe the stuff they say, they need help. If your philosophy causes you to doubt your own existence or the existence of your mind, it's time to put down the books and get back to the real world.

The description of Flew's journey from atheism to theism is followed by two appendices. The first is a refutation of the "new atheism" which is really a rehashing of materialism or positivism and is nothing new. The second is a defense of the divine relevation of Christianity. I didn't find this defense to be particularly strong and I'm kind of surprised Flew does. But, when it comes to believing in a Divine Mind, a Creator, a First Cause, I think Flew shows conclusively this is exactly where the evidence leads us. Whether one chooses to call this "God" or not is a matter of preference. But, there is sufficient reason to believe that the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Being does indeed exist and to believe so doesn't require a great leap of "faith" or really any faith at all other than the faith to honestly follow the evidence where it leads.

I read this book with the idea that Antony Flew really had something new to add to things. I was wrong. And disappointed. The cosmological arguments for a deity - and not even a deity really but just some kind of intelligence that brought the universe into being, some kind of extraterrestrial something about which nothing else specific can really be said, are not, to me, compelling. And Flew's book does not make them any more compelling. I think the Deists were in a much better position in the old days before it was understood that organic chemistry did not involve some "vital essence" and there was really nothing other than some kind of supernatural/spooky basis for life and living things. But with that gone, explaining the fine structure constant and such is an exercise in "what ifs." One might as well believe in Star Trek's "Q" and that such beings made our universe for sheer boredom relief. Flew does OK rehashing the usual cosmological stuff but there's nothing really new here.

This is a great little book.

Tough going for one not involved the details of the controversy though - Flew hits the high points of the various arguments but I think I'm going to have to read a few of the materials he references to really get a handle on his point of view.

In any case, the controversy seems a tad amusing to me from afar. Flew simply changed his mind on the existance of god after many years of thought. This is just his short, interesting and well considered view of matters. The tone of some of the reviews is awfully strident. On the subject of god's existance no one's got a lock; as Randy Newman sang, "there ain't no good guy, there ain't no bad guy, there's only you and me and we just disagree."

This was a very interesting book, depicting the journey of a confirmed atheist as he searched for evidence of the existence of God. He doesn't confess to having become a Christian, but finding evidence which he believes proves there is a God.

Highly philosophical this book is sometimes a bit hard to understand, but it worth the effort. It is a great book to share with other atheists as they will often take time to consider the musings of a peer.

This book sure stirred things up. I,for myself, really enjoyed the book and thought it was both accurate and clear. So much of what is published as philosophy is sheer obsfucation. This book is easy to read and understand. Maybe that is why the intelligencia don't like it so much. It isn't patronizing nor obscure.

This is an odd book. Here are the three points addressed in the book that are worth addressing: (1) The universe is run by laws which haven't been explained, (2) first cause, first cause, first cause, and (3) evolution is really hard to understand.

Flew (or more accurately Varghese) spends many pages debating the origins of the "fine tuned" universe idea verses the "multiverse" idea verses the "self contained universe" idea. Throughout this chapter, he seems to be god-of-the-gaps-ing on the reader. None of the ideas on the origin of the universe presented by the scientific community preclude the existence of God, therefore God exist. The logic falls victim to the fallacy of false dichotomies.

The author(s) also spend many pages on the idea of First Cause. There's nothing here that couldn't also be read on the Wikipedia entry for "First Cause". The idea of First Cause is centuries old, so I'm puzzled why this would do anything to convince Flew. It must have meant something or he wouldn't have devoted so much effort to the idea. I kept shaking my head: "First Cause? Really?"

Finally, the author(s) fail to grasp basic concepts of evolution. The author(s) take a straw man tactic by which they build up a clumsy definition of evolution and knock it down. It's kinda embarrassing to read that section.

The most puzzling aspect of this book is Appendix B, which is an interview with N. T. Wright. The scope of the entire book is about Anthony Flew's philosophical change from "atheism" to "deism". There is no reason to make mention of specific aspects of Christianity, let alone provide a 30 page defense of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In the debate between atheism and deism, the individual views of different religions are not relevant. Flew also makes references to Christianity as the religion "to beat," which is a truly idiotic statement to make. Why talk about Christianity as if it is better than all the other religions if you are not going to endorse it?

The book will convince some people of God and give all others a good laugh. Look at the marketing that went into the title of the book. World's Most Notorious Atheist? The title makes it sounds like atheist are notoriously bad and Anthony Flew was the worst. Flew likes to leave his shopping cart in the middle of the parking lot and squeezed his toothpaste tube from the middle. Atheism is a philosophical position that does not necessitate one to be "notorious," but it does require that atheist be grouchy for at least 7 hours of the day.

This is an odd book. Here are the three points addressed in the book that are worth addressing: (1) The universe is run by laws which haven't been explained, (2) first cause, first cause, first cause, and (3) evolution is really hard to understand.

Flew (or more accurately Varghese) spends many pages debating the origins of the "fine tuned" universe idea verses the multiverse idea verses the self contained universe idea. Throughout this chapter, he seems to be god-of-the-gaps-ing on the reader. None of the ideas presented by the scientific community preclude the existence of God, therefore God exist.

The author(s) also spend many pages on the idea of First Cause. There's nothing here that couldn't also be read on the Wikipedia entry for "First Cause". The idea of First Cause is centuries old, so I'm puzzled why this would do anything to convince Flew. It must have meant something or he wouldn't have devoted so much effort to the idea. I kept shaking my head: "First Cause? Really?"

Finally, the author(s) fail to grasp basic concepts of evolution. The author(s) take a straw man tactic by which they build up a clumsy definition of evolution and knock it down. It's kinda embarrassing to read that section.

The most puzzling aspect of this book is Appendix B, which is an interview with N. T. Wright about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The book "There Is a God" is about Anthony Flew changing a philosophical position from "atheism" to "deism". There is no reason to make mention specific aspects of Christianity, let alone provide a 30 page defense. Flew makes references to Christianity as the religion "to beat," which is a truly idiotic statement to make. Why talk about Christianity as if it is better than all the other religions if you are not going to endorse it?

The book will convince some people of God and give all others a good laugh. Look at the marketing that went into the title of the book. World's Most Notorious Atheist? The title makes it sounds like atheist are notoriously bad and Anthony Flew was the worst. Flew likes to leave his shopping cart in the middle of the parking lot and squeezed his toothpaste tube from the middle. Atheism is a philosophical position that does not necessitate one to be "notorious," but it does require that atheist be grouchy for at least 7 hours of the day and refuse to make a new pot of coffee in the company common room.

Flew is a philosopher, which means that he can say anything that can be supported by some sort of rational logic. How much use that is to anyone is another question.

In this book, Flew goes beyond philosophy, because he claims that there is sufficient evidence to prove the existence of God. He goes further: "The approach taken here is that we have all the evidence we need in our immediate experience and that only a deliberate refusal to 'look' is responsible for atheism of any variety." This book is clearly not just a memoir, or an explanation of Flew's conversion; it is a polemic against "any variety" of atheism. Indeed, many pages are given to criticizing what Flew calls the "New Atheists," which are the atheists who criticize religion.

Flew's "evidence" for God is the familiar argument for Divine or Intelligent design. Flew states categorically the impossibility that the universe, the laws of nature, or life could have arisen from natural causes. Flew takes the position that science fails because it can't explain everything right now, while a God explains everything so well.

Flew says he believes that the universe was brought into existence by an infinite Intelligence, and that life originates in a divine Source. He says that this view has emerged from modern science. Is it pure coincidence, then, that this is identical to the view that had emerged from ancient religion, going back thousands of years?

Flew says that the question of life is properly the job of philosophers, not of scientists, and that neither their authority nor their expertise as scientists is of any relevance. This strikes me as a rather bold and arrogant tail wagging the dog.

This book offers nothing new in the way of "evidence" for God, and even on purely philosophical grounds it's not very interesting or compelling. If Flew had really just described how he had "changed his mind," I would rate it better. But Flew is atagonistic and condescending towards atheism and atheists, perhaps because he is a "reformed" atheist himself. The book suffers for this.

Anthony Flew: "My name is on the book and it represents exactly my opinions. I would not have a book issued in my name that I do not 100 percent agree with. I needed someone to do the actual writing because I'm 84 and that was Roy Varghese's role. The idea that someone manipulated me because I'm old is exactly wrong. I may be old but it is hard to manipulate me. This is my book and it represents my thinking."

Unceasingly polite to those who didn't share his opinions, Anthony Flew was a gentleman atheist. Now he's older and has apparently changed his mind. I have no problem accepting that Flew's book was predominantly ghost-written by Varghese but reflects Flew's views. This is not an unusual practice. Many public figures have "authored" books "with help from" some named journalist - who wrote a book for a sports celebrity, for example, whom you suspect might be barely literate. In Flew's case, he's old, maybe he's tired, he's most likely not as sharp as he once was, and he simply changed his mind over a number of years.

As the text of the book clearly shows, he didn't change his mind by much. As a deist rather than an atheist, he would still reject revelations from God, miracles, interventions, prophecies, the Trinity, inspired Books from God, and an afterlife. Deism, the preferred belief system of the first five presidents, pretty much requires a higher intelligence of some sort to put things in motion, then retire to His ranch in the Andromeda galaxy - or somewhere - or not. Flew may now believe in God, sort of, but He's certainly not the anthropomorphic God familiar to Christians.

Flew's previous books were rigorously thought out. Parts of this book deal with three categories of supposed proofs of God - nature obeys rational and ordered laws, we are intelligently organized and purpose-driven beings, the very existence of nature itself. They are not the superbly academic treatises Flew used to write. I would suspect these parts were written by Varghese and approved by Flew. No wonder this part of the book is not particularly convincing. The rest of the book is a memoir that very much appears to be Flew's story as dictated by Flew - the best source anyone will find who's curious about why he changed his mind. And he is still respectful and polite.

Anthony Flew: "My name is on the book and it represents exactly my opinions. I would not have a book issued in my name that I do not 100 percent agree with. I needed someone to do the actual writing because I'm 84 and that was Roy Varghese's role. The idea that someone manipulated me because I'm old is exactly wrong. I may be old but it is hard to manipulate me. This is my book and it represents my thinking."

Unceasingly polite to those who didn't share his opinions, Anthony Flew was a gentleman atheist. Now he's older and has apparently changed his mind. I have no problem accepting that Flew's book was predominantly ghost-written by Varghese but reflects Flew's views. This is not an unusual practice. Many public figures have "authored" books "with help from" some named journalist - who wrote a book for a sports celebrity, for example, who you suspect might be barely literate. In Flew's case, he's old, maybe he's tired, he's most likely not as sharp as he once was, and he simply changed his mind over a number of years.

As the text of the book clearly shows, he didn't change his mind by much. As a deist rather than an atheist, he would still reject revelations from God, miracles, interventions, prophecies, the Trinity, inspired Books from God, and an afterlife. Deism, the preferred belief system of the first five presidents, pretty much requires a higher intelligence of some sort to put things in motion, then retire to His ranch in the Andromeda galaxy - or somewhere - or not. Flew may now believe in God, sort of, but He's certainly not the anthropomorphic God familiar to Christians.

Flew's previous books were rigorously thought out. The parts of this book that deal with proofs of God - nature obeys rational and ordered laws, we are intelligently organized and purpose-driven beings, the very existence of nature itself - are not as superbly academic. I would suspect these parts were written by Varghese and approved by Flew. No wonder this part of the book is not particularly convincing. The rest of the book is a memoir that very much appears to be Flew's story as dictated by Flew - the best source anyone will find if you're curious about why he changed his mind. And he is still respectful and polite.

I'm amazed that Anthony Flew could be considered the world's most notorious atheist. Yes, his books are packed with the most wise assessment of theist arguments. In fact, his analysis and refutation of all arguments for belief in God will stand the test of time. But, his work is equalled by much more readable atheists such as the ever popular George H. Smith (Atheism: The Case Against God), Michael Martin (a very thorough philosophical explorer of all the God themes) and several others which are easy to find by following the recommended books here on Amazon.
Equally amazing is that Flew, a student and advancer of David Hume, somehow misses the application of Hume's refutations of the Argument from Design to the current Intelligent Design argument. Victor Stenger, among others, does a magnificent and truthful job on the faulty philosophical conclusions drawn from the discoveries of science about the components and behaviors of physical nature. One cannot discover God in subatomic paticles. As for "order", "uniformity", "design" in nature, they are not the product of God. They are the natural consequence of the fact that every thing has an identity, a composition which not only makes it waht it is, but also equips it to act (and react, in specific contexts) in specific ways. Of course a thing acts according to its nature; how else could it act? That's not a miracle; that's nature.
So, Flew's atheistic books will continue to provide their refutations of the beliefs he finally was led into by bad philosophy. Too bad...and I do mean bad.

The author's intellectual journey from notable proponent of atheism to deist is interestingly detailed here, helping to illustrate the subtle but culturally very meaningful difference between seeing the universe as ordered and seeing it as artifactual. You don't get much of a sense of a human drama behind this journey as much as a long series of small choices that add up over time, a gradual "conversion" rather than a lightning bolt.

The technical differences in Flew's views over time are largely concealed in nuances. That makes this book particularly challenging to read deeply in order to empathize with Flew's soi disant conversion.

The emotional and socio-political implications of the shift between deism and strict atheism are much more significant than the technical issues Flew discusses, and these are not directly addressed to any great extent in this book. Yet it is clearly those implications that drives the strong reactions people have to Flew's personal intellectual journey. I think this is why our reaction to this book, as seen in many reviews here, tends to have much more drama than the book itself.

To me, the conceptual purely "engineering" difference between the extra-naturally pre-ordered universe of Deism and a purely natural world that orders itself over time is almost negligible if you think about it in terms of the processes involved. This is what makes Flew's journey one of nuances rather than a grand leap.

However, the implications of a world that contains deity and one that doesn't are immensely signficant to us way out of proportion to the "engineering" involved. It means something important to us to say that the universe is self-ordered vs. ordered by something sentient, not least because the latter leaves open the real possibility that something big and important cares about us. Ironically, Flew doesn't take that additional step through the door of theism, he remains in the doorway of deism, leaving the possibility of something caring about us but not the kind of personal faith that drives the more religiously minded person.

Flew's reflections on his path from atheist to deist make for a revealing picture of the "Necker Cube" nature of conceptual worldviews, showing how subtleties of view can accumulate over time to produce what appears at the end to observers to be a dramatic change in worldview. The drama of Flew's journey however seems to be more in the way the rest of us perceive it rather than any real drama for Flew himself.

Which is why they rate one star any book that refutes them.

Carl Flygare atheist extraordinayre wanted yall wannabe sightists ta c this here ole proof o evodelusion:

"The absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design, indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution." - Stephen Jay Gould (Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University), "Is a new and general theory of evolution emerging?" Paleobiology, vol. 6(1), January 1980, p. 127

"Contrary to what most scientists write, the fossil record does not support the Darwinian theory of evolution because it is this theory (there are several) which we use to interpret the fossil record. By doing so we are guilty of circular reasoning if we then say the fossil record supports this theory." - Ronald R. West, PhD (paleoecology and geology) (Assistant Professor of Paleobiology at Kansas State University), "Paleoecology and uniformitarianism". Compass, vol. 45, May 1968, p. 216

"The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way is comparable with the chance that 'a tornado sweeping through a junk yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein'." - Sir Fred Hoyle (English astronomer, Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge University), as quoted in "Hoyle on Evolution". Nature, vol. 294, 12 Nov. 1981, p. 105

"Echoing the criticism made of his father's habilis skulls, he added that Lucy's skull was so incomplete that most of it was 'imagination made of plaster of Paris', thus making it impossible to draw any firm conclusion about what species she belonged to." - Referring to comments made by Richard Leakey (Director of National Museums of Kenya) in The Weekend Australian, 7-8 May 1983, Magazine, p. 3

"The entire hominid collection known today would barely cover a billiard table, ... the collection is so tantalizingly incomplete, and the specimens themselves often so fragmented and inconclusive, that more can be said about what is missing than about what is present. ...but ever since Darwin's work inspired the notion that fossils linking modern man and extinct ancestor would provide the most convincing proof of human evolution, preconceptions have led evidence by the nose in the study of fossil man." - John Reader, photo-journalist and author of "Missing Links", "Whatever happened to Zinjanthropus?" New Scientist, 26 March 1981, p. 802

"A five million-year-old piece of bone that was thought to be a collarbone of a humanlike creature is actually part of a dolphin rib, ...He [Dr. T. White] puts the incident on par with two other embarrassing [sic] faux pas by fossil hunters: Hesperopithecus, the fossil pig's tooth that was cited as evidence of very early man in North America, and Eoanthropus or 'Piltdown Man,' the jaw of an orangutan and the skull of a modern human that were claimed to be the 'earliest Englishman'. "The problem with a lot of anthropologists is that they want so much to find a hominid that any scrap of bone becomes a hominid bone.'" - Dr. Tim White (anthropologist, University of California, Berkeley). As quoted by Ian Anderson "Hominoid collarbone exposed as dolphin's rib", in New Scientist, 28, April 1983, p. 199

"We add that it would be all too easy to object that mutations have no evolutionary effect because they are eliminated by natural selection. Lethal mutations (the worst kind) are effectively eliminated, but others persist as alleles. ...Mutants are present within every population, from bacteria to man. There can be no doubt about it. But for the evolutionist, the essential lies elsewhere: in the fact that mutations do not coincide with evolution." - Pierre-Paul Grassé (University of Paris and past-President, French Academie des Sciences) in Evolution of Living Organisms, Academic Press, New York, 1977, p. 88

"The essence of Darwinism lies in a single phrase: natural selection is the creative force of evolutionary change. No one denies that natural selection will play a negative role in eliminating the unfit. Darwinian theories require that it create the fit as well." - Stephen Jay Gould (Professor of Geology and Paleontology, Harvard University), "The return of hopeful monsters". Natural History, vol. LXXXVI(6), June-Jule 1977, p. 28

"And in man is a three-pound brain which, as far as we know, is the most complex and orderly arrangement of matter in the universe." - Dr. Isaac Asimov, biochemist; was a Professor at Boston University School of Medicine; internationally known author,

"In the game of energy and thermodynamics you can't even break even." - Dr. Isaac Asimov, Smithsonian Institute Journal, June 1970, p. 10

"Why do geologists and archaeologists still spend their scarce money on costly radiocarbon determinations? They do so because occasional dates appear to be useful. While the method cannot be counted on to give good, unequivocal results, the number do impress people, and save them the trouble of thinking excessively. Expressed in what look like precise calendar years, figures seem somehow better ... 'Absolute' dates determined by a laboratory carry a lot of weight, and are extremely helpful in bolstering weak arguments. No matter how 'useful' it is, though, the radiocarbon method is still not capable of yielding accurate and reliable results. There are gross discrepancies, the chronology is uneven and relative, and the accepted dates are actually selected dates. This whole bless thing is nothing but 13th-century alchemy, and it all depends upon which funny paper you read." - R.E. Lee, "Radiocarbon: ages in error", "Anthropological Journal of Canada" vol.19 (3), 1981, p.9-29

"All the above methods for dating the age of the earth, its various strata, and its fossils are questionable, because the rates are likely to have fluctuated widely over earth history.... It is obvious that radiometric techniques may not be the absolute dating methods that they are claimed to be. Age estimates on a given geological stratum by different radiometric methods are often quite different (sometimes by hundreds of millions of years). There is no absolutely reliable long term radiological `clock'. The uncertainties inherent in radiometric dating are disturbing to geologists and evolutionists..." - W.D. Stansfield, Ph.D., Instructor of Biology, Calif. Polytechnic State Univ., in "The Science of Evolution", Macmillan, N.Y. 1977, p. 82, 84)

"The intelligent layman has long suspected circular reasoning in the use of rocks to date fossils and fossils to date rocks. The geologist has never bothered to think of a good reply, feeling that explanations are not worth the trouble as long as the work brings results. This is supposed to be hard-headed pragmatism." - J. E. O'Rourks, "Pragmatism versus materialism in stratigraphy". American Journal of Science, vol. 276, January 1976, p. 47

"Scientists who go about teaching that evolution is a fact of life are great conmen, and the story they are telling may be the greatest hoax ever. In explaining evolution, we do not have one iota of fact." - Dr. T. N. Tahmisian (Atomic Energy Commission, USA) in "The Fresno Bee", August 20, 1959. As quoted by N. J. Mitchell, Evolution and the Emperor's New Clothes, Roydon Publications, UK, 1983, title page.

The evolutionist Eiseley wrote a book exposing his hero Darwin as being a credit thief who stole his idea of natural selection from Edward Blyth, a creationis scientist. He spun this creationist's theory into a negative destructive one that is not accepted by most modern evolutionists. Ironically, Blyth's version is accepted, however, Blyth is not given credit by them either. - Me

Five stars for logic and reasoning upkept with honesty and integrity. It's good to see people admit when they have to change their mind based on new information and arrive at the conclusion of a Creator. Seven years ago I came to that conclusion myself, and I find that new "converts" make for some of the deepest discussions we can have. I liked reading this because though I am a Christian, I don't think its necessary to use the bible to "prove there is a God." Logic will deduce that for us. Great work, Flew.

"My name is on the book and it represents exactly my opinions. I would not have a book issued in my name that I do not 100 percent agree with. I needed someone to do the actual writing because I'm 84 and that was Roy Varghese's role. This is my book and it represents my thinking." - Flew

This book is an extremely fluid, easy to read story of the transformation of one of the worlds most notorious atheists changed his mind. It is rather unfortunate and ridiculous that there are those who say that flew has succumed to senility or fear of death(he still maintains there is no afterlife). Would you say the same about Billy Graham if he rejected his faith and became atheist? Probably not, you would say he finally came to his senses, even if the book he wrote about it was merely the incoherent ramblings of a crazed man.

After I ordered this book I started to hear the rumblings about how Flew probably didn't write much of it himself and may have been manipulated by others. So my expectations probably weren't that high when I got it. I was pleasantly surprised.

The book is not a rigorous philosophical treatise on the existence of God. It's quite short (160 pages not including the two appendices), and very readable. The first part tells of Flew's life and career as a scholarly defender of atheism. The second part recounts his journey towards belief in God and the evidence that led him there.

I thought the arguments were sound as far as they went, but as noted they're lacking in rigorous development in many cases. It is, after all, a popular level book, but still worth the read. The style is one of personal narrative throughout, with far too many personal details of Flew's life for him not to have been intimately involved in the details of the writing of this book.

Once you get past the gimmick of Flew being a former atheist and great philosopher, you will find the book disappointing. His arguments for intelligent design are unconvincing cliches that have been better articulated by more scientifically literate authors. If you've read Behe or Dembski, don't waste time with Flew.

Antony Flew's "There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind" is a quiet and brief book that has generated a hornet's nest of controversy.

Antony Flew is an English philosopher and the son of a Methodist minister. He was born in 1923; this book was published in 2007. Flew's advanced age has become the focus of those attacking the book. Flew was educated at Cambridge and attended the meetings of Christian author CS Lewis' Socratic Club. With the publication of the 1966 book "God and Philosophy," Flew became a prominent atheist philosopher.

In a 2004 interview with Gary Habermas, Flew said he had come to believe in God. "There Is a God" expands on Flew's conversion. Flew believes in the God of Aristotle. This God is typified by "immutability, immateriality, omnipotence, omniscience, oneness or indivisibility, perfect goodness and necessary existence" (92).

"There Is a God" begins with a reserved account of Flew's life. For this reader the most intriguing portion was Flew's report that, though he had since abandoned his father's Christianity, he judged pre-marital sex as morally wrong (26). Like many readers, I find the personal and concrete more captivating than discussion of competing philosophical schools. Like a Jane Austen novel, though, Flew's book scurries past intimate detail.

Subsequent chapters summarize the evidence that prompted Flew to come to believe in an Aristotelian God: the universe's fine tuning that renders it hospitable to life, and the questions of life's origin, existence, and complexity. Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, George Wald, David Berlinski, etc, are quoted. Flew does make a good point about the unique gifts philosophy brings to bear when discussing scientific questions (89-91).

It is true that this portion is not original; one can easily find similar arguments on the web. One can easily find these arguments because so many world class scientists have made them. World class scientists and thinkers endorse Flew's take on scientific questions; their endorsements can be found on the back cover and inside front cover of the book. In short, New Atheists' insistence that Flew's take on science is flawed is belied by the many scientists whose views parallel his.

"There Is a God" closes with two appendices; one written by science and religion writer Roy Abraham Varghese, and the other by Bishop N. T. Wright. Varghese addresses perceived flaws in the arguments of New Atheist authors including Richard Dawkins. N. T. Wright offers a brief for the divinity of Jesus.

In November, 2007, The New York Times published Mark Oppenheimer's, "The Turning of an Atheist," an article that, without evidence but rich with catty innuendo, insinuated that Flew was feeble with Alzheimer's disease, that nothing that Flew said could be believed, and that a cabal of conspiratorial Christians, exercising a Svengali-like power and sociopathic lack of conscience, knowingly manipulated and exploited Flew

For a moment, let us leave aside, as Oppenheimer does, all questions of decency and good taste. Question: Does Antony Flew suffer from Alzheimer's, and is disease the cause of Flew's belief in God? New Atheists will insist on this; to them, faith is evidence of low IQ and/or mental illness.

Answer: no one knows. Even if it were proved that Flew has Alzheimer's, it could not be proved that Alzheimer's caused him to believe in God. Further, people who work with the elderly know that we humans do lose predictable cognitive skills as we age. We also, often, gain much: wisdom, patience, perspective. To a casual observer, an elderly person can appear demented. Often, though, what appears to be dementia is not. Rather, the elderly person still has the ability to think deep thoughts, but lacks some abilities that younger people can display readily. This is not just true of the elderly. Often deaf people are wrongly assumed to be stupid, people with Parkinson's are wrongly assumed to be drunk, etc.

Antony Flew was a champion of atheism for many decades. Many New Atheists are, now that he is old, dragging his name through the dirt. The revolution eats its young. If their arguments against God are as ironclad as New Atheists insist, they need not calumniate an elderly man who was once their champion. Once again we see that, in its shrillness and ethical bankruptcy, the New Atheism is not just anti-God, it is anti-human.

Antony Flew's "There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind" is a quiet and brief book that has generated a hornet's nest of controversy.

Antony Flew is an English philosopher and the son of a Methodist minister. He was born in 1923; this book was published in 2007. Flew's advanced age has become the focus of those attacking the book. Flew was educated at Cambridge and attended the meetings of Christian author CS Lewis' Socratic Club. With the publication of the 1966 book "God and Philosophy," Flew became a prominent atheist philosopher.

In a 2004 interview with Gary Habermas, Flew said he had come to believe in God. "There Is a God" expands on Flew's conversion. Flew believes in the God of Aristotle. This God is typified by "immutability, immateriality, omnipotence, omniscience, oneness or indivisibility, perfect goodness and necessary existence" (92).

"There Is a God" begins with a reserved account of Flew's life. For this reader the most intriguing portion was Flew's report that, though he had since abandoned his father's Christianity, he judged pre-marital sex as morally wrong (26). Like many readers, I find the personal and concrete more captivating than discussion of competing philosophical schools. Like a Jane Austen novel, though, Flew's book scurries past intimate detail.

Subsequent chapters summarize the evidence that prompted Flew to come to believe in an Aristotelian God: the universe's fine tuning that renders it hospitable to life, and the questions of life's origin, existence, and complexity. Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, George Wald, David Berlinski, etc, are quoted. Flew does make a good point about the unique gifts philosophy brings to bear when discussing scientific questions (89-91).

It is true that this portion is not original; one can easily find similar arguments on the web. One can easily find these arguments because so many world class scientists have made them. World class scientists and thinkers endorse Flew's take on scientific questions; their endorsements can be found on the back cover and inside front cover of the book. In short, New Atheists' insistence that Flew's take on science is flawed is belied by the many scientists whose views parallel his.

"There Is a God" closes with two appendices; one written by science and religion writer Roy Abraham Varghese, and the other by Bishop N. T. Wright. Varghese addresses perceived flaws in the arguments of New Atheist authors including Richard Dawkins. N. T. Wright offers a brief for the divinity of Jesus.

In November, 2007, The New York Times published Mark Oppenheimer's, "The Turning of an Atheist," an article that, without evidence but rich with catty innuendo, insinuated that Flew was feeble with Alzheimer's disease, that nothing that Flew said could be believed, and that a cabal of conspiratorial Christians, exercising a Svengali-like power and sociopathic lack of conscience, knowingly manipulated and exploited Flew

For a moment, let us leave aside, as Oppenheimer does, all questions of decency and good taste. Question: Does Antony Flew suffer from Alzheimer's, and is disease the cause of Flew's belief in God? New Atheists will insist on this; to them, faith is evidence of low IQ and/or mental illness.

Answer: no one knows. Even if it were proved that Flew has Alzheimer's, it could not be proved that Alzheimer's caused him to believe in God. Further, people who work with the elderly know that we humans do lose predictable cognitive skills as we age. We also, often, gain much: wisdom, patience, perspective. To a casual observer, an elderly person can appear demented. Often, though, what appears to be dementia is not. Rather, the elderly person still has the ability to think deep thoughts, but lacks some abilities that younger people can display readily. This is not just true of the elderly. Often deaf people are wrongly assumed to be stupid, people with Parkinson's are wrongly assumed to be drunk, etc.

Antony Flew was a champion of atheism for many decades. Many atheists are, now that he is old, dragging his name through the dirt. The revolution eats its young. This betrayal is reprehensible. It is also unnecessary. If their arguments against God are as ironclad as New Atheists insist, they need not calumniate an elderly man who was once their champion. Once again we see that, in its shrillness and ethical bankruptcy, the New Atheism is not just anti-God, it is anti-human.

This is a good overview of Flew's change of mind from atheism to deism over the course of his lifetime. However, there are two things to note that may dissuade the casual reader. First, this is NOT a story of a journey from atheism to Christianity, like some like to portray it as: Flew accepts that there is a God, now, but makes no allowances for what that God is like, nor does he believe in a heaven, hell, or any other sort of an afterlife. So, the average Christian reader will not find what he or she is expecting in this book. Second, Flew is a first class philosopher, and his arguments and evidences are largely based on philosophy and other forms of logic and reasoning. These explanations can be wordy and hard to follow for someone not used to this type of thinking. Overall, this is a very good book, but possibly not for every typical reader.

When the news broke in 2004 that Antony Flew, one of the most influential atheist thinkers of the 20th century, had accepted the existence of God, reactions among his fellow atheists ranged from shock to sorrow to denial. A few years later, he has now published his account of what evidence led to his "conversion", supplemented with essays by Roy Abraham Varghese and N.T. Wright.

In this work, Flew promises that the three together constitute a "powerful new vision of the philosophy of religion". This is exactly what I expected in picking up this volume. Sadly, the evidence Flew cites and the vision he expounds are neither powerful nor new.

There is not a single argument Flew offers that is even remotely original. In fact, it is largely composed of re-hashings of the "fine-tuning" design style arguments already offered by a myriad of thinkers. Sure, he still has a flair for the clever parable; but nothing in the arguments is new, and in many places his "arguments" consist of little more than lengthy quotes from others. He allows the additions by Varghese and Wright to make at least half of his case for him. From someone whose career in philosophy of religion began with incredibly novel and innovative ideas (however flawed they may be), this is especially disheartening.

Perhaps the work could be salvaged by the quality of the arguments; but alas, save for his refusal to make wild speculations about the mathematical probability of the physical world on a naturalistic view, it fares no better here than others who have made fine-tuning style arguments. In fact, in several places, I found myself asking out loud "Really? Flew was convinced by THIS?" Repeated from other sources, Flew's arguments inherit the questionable presuppositions of all fine-tuning arguments. Also repeated from his other sources, Flew takes a great deal of time arguing that naturalism can't account for order (even repeating some of the same mistakes typical of the literature here, such as treating the naturalistic view as chalking everything up to chance, which it most certainly does not), but takes very little effort to show how the existence of God DOES explain the pehnomena he addresses.

The "supplementary" piece by Varghese is even worse on this account. A clear graduate of the William Lane Craig school of debate, Varghese spends a lot of time criticizing naturalists, calling their views "laughable" and "far-fetched", only believeable by one who has "take[n] leave of one's senses". He even has the gall in the introduction to criticize Richard Dawkins (rightly) for his blatant ad homine criticisms of Flew, but then promptly turn around and do the same to Dawkins. In his essay, Vargese focuses a lot--21 pages worth-- on how naturalism can't explain life, consciousness and thought (ignoring the vast body of work in these areas); then offers ONE WHOLE PARAGRAPH to explain how God accounts for these. His argument? He can't conceive of how these things could have arisen from non-living, non-conscious matter. I've rarely been so underwhelmed by an argument. Forget the vast amount of work being done in biology, psychology and neuroscience--Varghese can't conceive of it, so life, consciousness and thought MUST be due to God. Wright's arguments for the historicity of the incarnation and the resurrection are just as underwhelming: what they boils down to is that such claims must be true because no other explanation can account for why a group of 1st-century Jews would come up with ideas so out of touch with what other 1st-century Jews believed. What ARE those alternative explanations, and WHY can't they explain this? Wright never says; but we DO have his assurance that he's examined all of them.

This book is SO out of step with the quality of Flew's other work in philosophy that at times I found myself doubting its authenticity (though I'm sure that Flew would be publicly railing against this book if it were), or wondering whether Flew is pulling a Sokal-esque hoax and has his expose ready to roll off some other press. I sure hope so; for it would truly be tragic if one of the most innovative philosophers of the 20th century left us with his final words to the world being a pointless repetition of other scholars' already unconvincing arguments.