I would like to recommend the book, There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, by Antony Flew. Yes, before there was Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens, there was Antony Flew, and his essays on atheism are the basis of the arguments they make today. As he said in commenting on Dawkins argument that Albert Einstein was an atheist: “Richard Dawkins propounds my old position…” Indeed he does. Indeed, they all do.
Flew presented his first atheistic paper at a meeting of the Oxford University Socratic Club which was chaired by C.S. Lewis. His sub-chapter, Locking Horns with Lewis, is very interesting reading (as is the entire auto-biographical portion of his book).
The unofficial creed of the Socratic Club, propounded by Lewis in the first issue of The Socratic Digest, was; “Follow the argument wherever it leads.” This statement became Flew’s creed. For most of his life the argument led him away from a belief in God. During those years he laid the intellectual foundations for what would latter become the New Atheism of Richard Dawkins and company.
But unlike the present leadership of the New Atheist movement, Flew kept reading other people’s arguments, and he considered them respectfully and carefully. Ironically, in so doing he proved the wisdom of a warning given to atheists such as himself by his old nemeses, C.S. Lewis: “A young man who wishes to remain a sound Atheist cannot be too careful of his reading. There are traps everywhere-’Bibles laid open, millions of surprises,’ as Herbert says, ‘fine nets and stratagems.’ God is, if I may say it, very unscrupulous.”
Flew began to find his atheism shaken while studying new scientific discoveries in the area of micro-biology. Specifically, as he began to unravel the DNA molecule his atheism began to unravel too. By studying intelligent design (probably to refute it) he came to realize that he was seeing the evidence he had repeatedly insisted could not be found. He found the signature of God.
And so on December 9, 2004, the man who laid the intellectual foundation upon which modern atheism sits — truly the world’s most notorious atheist — astounded his colleagues and the intellectual world by publicly announcing he had switched sides.
Dawkins, and others in the movement, felt betrayed. They charged him with accepting Pascal’s wager because of his fear of approaching death. Flew answered this charge by pointing out that he was formerly an atheist and a mortalist (one who does not believe in life after death). He now identifies himself as a deist and a mortalist. “So,” he argued, “since I do not believe in the hereafter, how can I be accused of accepting Pascal’s wager?” However, he does have a new openness to Christianity. In fact, I would say he’s flirting with it right now.
So, I would especially challenge my atheist readers to take the time to read Flew’s short book. Since you like his arguments against God’s existence so much, perhaps you should consider the arguments that led him to change his mind.
Posted in Apologetics
