BiblicalInsights.net

     In 2007, a book was published titled, There is A God–How The World’s Most Notorius  Atheist Changed His Mind.  It was written by Anthony Flew.  The book relates the significant change that Anthony Flew made from being an atheist to becoming a theist.  Flew did not convert to Christianity.  He did change his beliefs about God.  What factors led to the breaking of the grip of atheism on Flew’s mind?
     Flew was not always an atheist.  He was the son of a Methodist minister who lived and worked in Cambridge, England.  Early in his life, he questioned his father’s religion.  He makes an insightful statement, “never did I feel the slightest desire to commune with God” (p. 10).  He does not recall feeling any interest or enthusiasm for religious practices and issues.  He did not intellectually nor emotionally connect with the religious aspirations of his father.
     By the time he was 15, he considered himself to be an atheist.  By age 23, he was an atheist and a mortalist (he did not believe in life after death).  The so-called problem of evil disturbed him and formed his first basis of acceptance of atheism.  Though upon reflection, he states that he came to his conclusions about atheism much too early and without proper reflection.
     He attended Oxford University and studied Philosophy under Gilbert Ryle who was the Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at the University of Oxford (1947-1948).  He went on to win the prize in philosophy at Oxford–The John Locke Scholarship in Mental Philosophy.  He then began a full-time teaching job at Oxford.
     Ryle introduced Flew to the Socratic principle:  “We must follow the argument wherever it leads” (p. 22).  This principle requires that every objection made person to person must also be met person to person.  This principle became a guiding influence in Flew’s personal life.
     The Socratic principle formed the inspiration of the Socratic Club at Oxford.  This club was a forum for lively debates.  C. S. Lewis was its president from 1942 to 1954 (12 years).  Many of the leading atheists at Oxford locked horns with Lewis and his fellow Christians. Flew had occasion to debate Lewis at Oxford.
     Flew was an avowed atheist for 66 years of his life.  In May, 2004, he announced at a symposium at New York University that he now accepted the existence of God.  He was 81 years old (born in 1923, an avowed atheist at age 15 and now 81).  What brought about the change?
     Flew’s journey to belief in God followed a pathway called Natural Theology (see Psalms 19:1-7; Rom. 1:19-21).  Flew considered the arguments from design and from cosmology to be the most convincing.  In Flew’s own words, “Science spotlights three dimensions of nature that point to God.”  The first is the fact that nature obeys laws.  The second is the dimension of life, of intelligently organized and purpose-driven beings which arose from matter.  The third is the very existence of nature.  Upon further consideration of each of these areas, Flew formulated three questions:  (1)  How did the laws of nature come to be? (p. 91);  (2) How did life as a phenomenon originate from non-life?; (3) How did the universe, by which we mean all that is physical, come into existence?
     Flew gives detailed answers to each of these questions.  The first question is answered in the following way, “The important point is not merely that there are regularities in nature, but that these regularities are mathematically precise, universal, and “tied together.”  Einstein spoke of them as “reason incarnate” (p. 96).  The laws of nature are the thoughts of the  Mind of God.  A compelling argument would be that the world is so constructed as a suitable habitat for man that it must be that someone (God) knew we were coming!
     The second question is answered by Flew in the following manner.  “…biologists’ investigation of DNA has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements needed to produce life, that intelligence must have been involved” (p. 123).  Questions that must be answered:  How does non-living matter produce living matter?  How do you explain the emergence from the very earliest life-forms which were incapable of reproducing themselves, of life-forms with a capacity for reproducing themselves?  How can a universe of mindless matter produce beings with intrinsic ends, self-replication capabilities, and “coded chemistry” (DNA and RNA)? (p. 124).  These questions are not answered satisfactorily by evolutionists.  George Wald stated, “We choose to believe the impossible, that life arose spontaneously by chance” (p. 131).
     The third question is answered by Flew in the following fashion.  “How do you explain the existence of the universe?  Can something arise from nothing?  The answer is no.  The universe exists as a result of God’s existence. 
     Flew believes that God is “self-existent, immutable, immaterial, omnipresent, and omniscient” (p. 155).  At the time he wrote this book, he did not fully accept Christianity.  However, he includes two appendices in his book that take up the question of the existence of a human soul and the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
     This book is a devastating blow to atheism.  Flew takes on Richard Dawkins and other atheists and exposes the fallacy of their arguments.  Hopefully you will be honest enough to follow the arguments where they lead!