Antony Flew

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Antony Flew : biography

11 February 1923 – 8 April 2010

Antony Garrard Newton Flew (11 February 1923 – 8 April 2010, The Times, The Daily Telegraph, 14 Apr 2010) was a British philosopher. Belonging to the analytic and evidentialist schools of thought, Flew was most notable for his work related to the philosophy of religion. During the course of his career he taught at the universities of Oxford, Aberdeen, Keele and Reading, and at York University in Toronto.

For much of his career Flew was known as a strong advocate of atheism, arguing that one should presuppose atheism until empirical evidence of a God surfaces. He also criticised the idea of life after death,. Anthony Flew, Internet Infidels, 1998. the free will defence to the problem of evil, and the meaningfulness of the concept of God.. Anthony Flew, Internet Infidels, 2000. In 2003 he was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto. However, in 2004 he stated an allegiance to deism, more specifically a belief in the Aristotelian God, stating that in keeping his lifelong commitment to go where the evidence leads, he now believes in the existence of God. Gary R. Habermas, Philosophia Christi Vol. 6, No. 2 (Winter 2004).

He later wrote the book There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, with contributions from Roy Abraham Varghese. This book (and Flew’s conversion itself) has been the subject of controversy, following an article in The New York Times Magazine alleging that Flew had mentally declined, and that Varghese was the primary author., Mark Oppenheimer, ‘"The New York Times Magazine, 11/4/07 The matter remains contentious, with some commentators including PZ Myers and Richard Carrier supporting the allegations, and others, including Flew himself, opposing them. He was also known for the development of the no true Scotsman fallacy, and his debate on retrocausality with Michael Dummett.

Atheism and deism

Prominent atheist

While an undergraduate, Flew attended the weekly meetings of C. S. Lewis’s Socratic Club fairly regularly. Although he found Lewis to be "an eminently reasonable man" and "by far the most powerful of Christian apologists for the sixty or more years following his founding of that club," he was not persuaded by Lewis’s argument from morality as found in Mere Christianity. Flew also criticised several of the other philosophical proofs for God’s existence. He concluded that the ontological argument in particular failed because it is based on the premise that the concept of Being can be derived from the concept of Goodness. Only the scientific forms of the teleological argument ultimately impressed Flew as decisive. Gary R. Habermas, Biola, 9 December 2004.

During the time of his involvement in the Socratic Club, Flew also wrote the article "Theology and Falsification," which argued that claims about God were meaningless where they could not be tested for truth or falsehood. Though initially published in an undergraduate journal, the article came to be widely reprinted and discussed. Later, in God and Philosophy (1966) and The Presumption of Atheism by Antony Flew, (1976, reprinted in his book God Freedom and Immorality: A Critical Analysis, 1984) (1976, reprinted 1984), Flew argued that one should presuppose atheism until evidence of a God surfaces. Flew was also critical of the idea of life after death and the free will defence to the problem of evil.

Revised views

Conversion to deism

On several occasions, apparently starting in 2001, rumours circulated claiming that Flew had converted from atheism to deism. Flew denied these rumours on the Secular Web website. Antony Flew. Internet Infidels, 31 August 2001

In January 2004 Flew and Gary Habermas, his friend and philosophical adversary took part in, and conducted a dialogue on the resurrection at California Polytechnic State University – San Luis Obispo. During a couple of telephone discussions shortly after that dialogue, Flew explained to Habermas that he was considering becoming a theist. While Flew did not change his position at that time, he concluded that certain philosophical and scientific considerations were causing him to do some serious rethinking. He characterised his position as that of atheism standing in tension with several huge question marks.