<wordsoftruth114@email.com> wrote in message
news:1118358759.407792.199800@g49g2000cwa.googlegroups.com...

Thinking Straighter

Why the world's most famous atheist now believes in God.


by James A. Beverley

big snip.

Antony Flew, one of the world's leading philosophers, has changed his
mind about God. And he has agnostics worried.
James A. Beverley is professor of Christian apologetics at Tyndale
Seminary in Toronto. For more information on the interview with Flew,
see Beverley's website at www.religionwatch.ca.

What a major load of crap!!

The belief in the Christian god... is an appalling nightmare. I
reject the notion that the whole universe was created by this kind of
evil creature who would create such a thing. - Anthony Flew, March 22,
2005


What more needs to be said? Christian Neo-Theocrats babbling *****,
grasping in any straw to prop up their unsupported unsubstantiated
untenable position.

Later Larry
aa # 2216

wordsoftruth114@email.com wrote:

Thinking Straighter

Why the world's most famous atheist now believes in God.


by James A. Beverley



Antony Flew,

Great Scott I'm tired hearing about this guy. All the xians claim Flew
was the most famous atheist, but I never heard of him until his supposed
conversion.

Has anyone heard of this Flew character before this?

Great Scott I'm tired hearing about this guy. All the xians claim Flew
was the most famous atheist, but I never heard of him until his supposed
conversion.
Has anyone heard of this Flew character before this?

wordsoftruth114@email.com wrote:

Thinking Straighter

Why the world's most famous atheist now believes in God.


by James A. Beverley



Antony Flew,

Great Scott I'm tired hearing about this guy. All the xians claim Flew
was the most famous atheist, but I never heard of him until his supposed
conversion.

Has anyone heard of this Flew character before this?

one of the world's leading philosophers, has changed his

mind about God. And he has agnostics worried.

Some are mystified and others are angry. Typical of many responses is
this one skeptical blogger: "Sounds to me like an old man, confronted
by the end of life, making one final desperate attempt at salvation."
Richard Carrier of The Secular Web even accuses him of "willfully
sloppy scholarship."

His pedigree in philosophy explains the recent media frenzy and
controversy. Raised in a Christian home and son of a famous Methodist
minister, Flew became an atheist at age 15. A student of Gilbert Ryle's
at Oxford, Flew won the prestigious John Locke Prize in Mental
Philosophy. He has written 26 books, many of them classics like God and
Philosophy and How to Think Straight. A 1949 lecture given to C. S.
Lewis's Oxford Socratic Club became one of the most widely published
essays in philosophy. The Times Literary Supplement said Flew fomented
a change in both the theological and philosophical worlds.

Flew taught at Oxford, Aberdeen, Keele, Reading, and has lectured in
North America, Australia, Africa, South America, and Asia. The Times of
London referred to him as "one of the most renowned atheists of the
past half-century, whose papers and lectures have formed the bedrock of
unbelief for many adherents."

Last summer he hinted at his abandonment of naturalism in a letter to
Philosophy Now. Rumors began circulating on the internet about Flew's
inclinations towards belief in God, and then Richard Ostling broke the
story in early December for the Associated Press. According to Craig
Hazen, associate professor of comparative religions and apologetics at
Biola, the school received more than 35,000 hits on their site that
contains Flew's interview for Philosophia Christi, the journal of the
Evangelical Philosophical Society. At his home in Reading, west of
London, Flew told me: "I have been simply amazed by the attention given
to my change of mind."

So what exactly is the reason for and nature of his "change of mind"?

Jeffersonian Deist
Flew has had to assure former students that he does not now believe in
revealed religion. "Even one of my daughters asked if this meant we
were going to say grace at meals," he said. "The answer is no."

Flew is also quick to point out that he is not a Christian. "I have
become a deist like Thomas Jefferson." He cites his affinity with
Einstein who believed in "an Intelligence that produced the integrative
complexity of creation." To make things perfectly clear, he told me: "I
understand why Christians are excited, but if they think I am going to
become a convert to Christ in the near future, they are very much
mistaken."

"Are you Paul on the road to Damascus?" I asked him.

"Certainly not."

Comedian Jay Leno suggested a motive for the change on The Tonight
Show: "Of course he believes in God now. He's 81 years old." It's
something many agnostics have said more seriously. However, Flew is not
worried about impending death or post-mortem salvation. "I don't want a
future life. I have never wanted a future life," he told me. He assured
the reporter for The Times: "I want to be dead when I'm dead and that's
an end to it." He even ended an interview with the Humanist Network
News by stating: "Goodbye. We shall never meet again."

Flew's U-turn on God lies in a far more significant reality. It is
about evidence. "Since the beginning of my philosophical life I have
followed the policy of Plato's Socrates: We must follow the argument
wherever it leads." I asked him if it was tough to change his mind.
"No. It was not hard. I've always engaged in inquiry. If I am shown to
have been wrong, well, okay, so I was wrong."

The Impact of Evangelical Scholars
Actually, Flew has been rethinking the arguments for a Designer for
several years. When I saw him in London in the spring of 2003, he told
me he was still an atheist but was impressed by Intelligent Design
theorists. By early 2004 he had made the move to deism. Surprisingly,
he gives first place to Aristotle in having the most significant impact
on him. "I was not a specialist on Aristotle, so I was reading parts of
his philosophy for the first time." He was aided in this by The
Rediscovery of Wisdom, a work on Aristotle by David Conway, one of
Flew's former students.

Flew also cites the influence of Gerald Schroeder, an Israeli
physicist, and Roy Abraham Varghese, author of The Wonder of the World
and an Eastern Rite Catholic. Flew appeared with both scientists at a
New York symposium last May where he acknowledged his changed
conviction about the necessity for a Creator. In the broader picture,
both Varghese and Schroeder, author of The Hidden Face of God, argue
from the fine-tuning of the universe that it is impossible to explain
the origin of life without God. This forms the substance of what led
Flew to move away from Darwinian naturalism.

I studied with Flew in 1985 in Toronto, and he told me then about the
positive impression he had of emerging evangelical scholarship. That
year Varghese had arranged a Dallas conference on God, and included
atheists, like Flew, and theists. That same year Flew had his first
debate with historian Gary Habermas of Liberty University on the
resurrection of Jesus, recorded in Did Jesus Rise from the Dead? They
have debated twice since on the same topic.

Flew has also debated Terry Miethe, who holds doctorates in both
philosophy and religion, on the existence of God, and he has been
involved in philosophical exchanges with J. P. Moreland, another
well-known Christian philosopher. In 1998 he had a major debate in
Madison, Wisconsin, with William Lane Craig, research professor at
Talbot, in honor of the 50th anniversary of the famous BBC debate
between Bertrand Russell and F. C. Copleston, the brilliant Catholic
philosopher.

In Reading, I asked Flew more explicitly about the impact of these and
other scholars. "Who amazes you the most of the defenders of Christian
theism?"

He replied, "I would have to put Alvin Plantinga pretty high," and he
also complimented Miethe, Moreland, and Craig for their philosophical
skills. He regards Richard Swinburne, the Oxford philosophy of religion
professor, as the leading figure in the United Kingdom. "There is
really no competition to him." He said that Habermas has made "the most
impressive case for Christian theism on the basis of New Testament
writings."

These Christian philosophers have uniform respect for Flew as a person
and as a thinker. Craig spoke of him as "an enduring figure in
positivistic philosophy" and was "rather surprised by his giving up his
atheistic views." He, Miethe, and Habermas have found Flew to be a
perfect gentleman both in public debate and private conversations.
Swinburne says Flew has always been a tough thinker, though less
dogmatic as the years went by. Plantinga, the founder of the Society of
Christian Philosophers, said that Flew's change is "a tribute to his
open-mindedness as well as an indication of the strength of current
broadly scientific arguments against atheism."

What Holds Him Back from Christianity?
Flew's preference for deism and continued dislike of alleged revelation
emerge from two deep impulses in his philosophy. First, Flew has an
almost unshakable view against the supernatural, a view that he learned
chiefly from David Hume, the 18th-century Scottish philosopher. Flew, a
leading authority on Hume, wrote the classic essay on miracles in The
Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

What is rather surprising in Flew's dogmatism is that he believes Hume
did not and could not prove that miracles are, strictly speaking,
impossible. "If this is the case, why not be open to God's possible
intervention?" I asked. He replied by saying that the laws of nature
are so well established that testimonies about miracles are easy for
him to ignore. He is not impressed by people who hear regularly from
God. He did concede, reluctantly and after considerable discussion,
that God could, in principle, puncture his bias against the
supernatural.

Of more significance, Flew detests any notion that a loving God would
send any of his creatures to eternal flames. He cannot fathom how
intelligent Christians can believe this doctrine. He even said in his
debate with Terry Miethe that he has entertained the thought that the
Creator should punish, though not endlessly, only those who defend the
notion of eternal torment. On this matter, Flew is willing to entertain
fresh approaches to divine justice. In fact, he had just obtained
Lewis's book The Great Divorce in order to assess Lewis's unique
interpretation on the topic of judgment.

When I asked Flew about his broader case for deism, he asked
rhetorically: "Why should God be concerned about what his creatures
think about him anymore than he should be directly concerned with their
conduct?" I reminded him of biblical verses that also ask rhetorically:
"He who planted the ear, does he not hear? He who formed the eye, does
he not see?" (Ps. 94:9) It seems incredible to argue that any human
cares more about the world than God does. "Is the Creator really
morally clueless?" I asked. Flew responded to what he called this
"interesting argument" with openness. Moreland, who teaches at Biola,
says he hopes that Flew "will become even more curious about whether or
not God has ever made himself clearly known to humanity."

Unlike many other modern philosophers, Flew has a high regard for the
person of Jesus. Early in the interview, he stated rather abruptly:
"There's absolutely no good reason for believing in Islam, whereas in
Christianity you have the charismatic figure of Jesus, the defining
example of what is meant by charismatic." By charismatic, he means
dynamic and impressive. He dismissed views that Jesus never existed as
"ridiculous."

Later I asked, "Are you basically impressed with Jesus?"

"Oh yes. He is a defining instance of a charismatic figure, perplexing
in many ways, of course." Beyond this, Flew remains agnostic about
orthodox views of Jesus, though he has made some very positive remarks
about the case for the Resurrection. In the journal Philosophia Christi
he states: "The evidence for the Resurrection is better than for
claimed miracles in any other religion." No, he still does not believe
that Jesus rose from the dead. However, he told me, the case for an
empty tomb is "considerably better than I thought previously."

Plantinga, the dean of Christian philosophers, told me that the radical
change in Christian scholarship over Flew's career has been remarkable.
When Flew originally attacked theism more than 50 years ago, there were
few Christians working in philosophy. Now there are a large and growing
number of scholars committed to intellectual defense of the gospel. It
is, of course, no small matter that one of the world's leading
philosophers has moved somewhat closer to the side of the angels.


James A. Beverley is professor of Christian apologetics at Tyndale
Seminary in Toronto. For more information on the interview with Flew,
see Beverley's website at www.religionwatch.ca.



http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/004/29.80.html