Antony Garrard Newton Flew – There is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind. [A Book Review, kind of]

There has been many attempts by theists to claim empirical evidence to justify a belief in gods. Once in a while one stumbles upon relatively original arguments, but just like the arguments for atheism, these original ones are far and wide apart. Many if not most arguments from, for and against either side are as old as ancient Greek philosophy.

Flew, in 2004 managed to jump the fence from atheism to theism, deism to be slightly more precise.  Here we are looking at a distinguished philosopher who was, perhaps not really the world’s most notorious atheist as the some what arrogant tittle implies, but an atheist of note none the less. A  fair amount of controversy  followed suit.  Atheists revolted in ad hominem defense and every Christian with an ear on the ground rejoiced and thanked Jesus [piece be with him] for finally showing Flew the way, forgetting of course that he did not actually convert to Christianity [perhaps not yet].

Now back to the book. It is, as supernatural advocating books go, not actually a bad one, one might suppose, well apart from the terrible preface by Roy Abraham Varghese who seems mostly interested in discrediting Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett  -and other “new atheists”- whilst using Flew mainly as a marketing tool for himself and Christianity.

The arguments Flew seems  to put forward basically come down to the following theistic philosophical clichés:

• Who wrote the laws of nature? Order and symmetry means design: The “origin” of reality, natural laws and life proves the existence of a conscious creator.
• Did the universe know we were coming? The fine tune argument: Conditions in the universe are tuned specifically to favour the existence of  a universe and “inevitably” life, so a god (or ultimate mind) must have planned and caused it.
• Life is too complex to come about naturally.  The argument from design: Life is so improbable that it could not possibly have come about without the intension and intervention of a conscious creator.
• How did matter become self aware? The problem of consciousness: How does inanimate matter turn into self aware, conscious entities?

The arguments/assertions are two really: Existence in itself proves the “prime mover”;  The complexity of life proves the existence of a ‘life planner’.>>

Logical Positivism.  Flew makes a point of mentioning logical positivism many times during  the first few chapters taking us through his atheist years,  alluring to the idea that it (logical positivism) is not the be all and end all of philosophies.  He perhaps go as far as insinuating that it is indeed fundamentally flawed.  A  simplified explanation of logical positivism is this: We can believe in what we can prove; Observational evidence is indispensable for knowledge of the world.  Flew is definitely steering away from this principle. This I would have thought is mainly because of logical positivism’s insistence on using empirical evidence when explaining reality and perhaps he can still feel deep down inside that religions have none of that.

This brings me to his collapse in reasoning.  While reading on to the latter part of his book (where he defends  conversion to theist/deist ideas), what becomes clear is that he has now stopped thinking things through with the vigorous thoroughness of his past. I cant help but think, biasedly perhaps, that if he actually stayed true to the Socratic principle of following the evidence where it may lead (which he places serious emphasis on throughout the book), he would have come out an agnostic, not a theist/deist since there simply is currently no concrete, empirical evidence either for the existence or against the existence of some kind of creator/designer god. So what evidence is it then that he follows into the The Valley of the Shadow of Death?

Perhaps Richard Dawkins’ opinion on Flew and the god of the gaps really is not that far off. It is not evidence that Flew is following but really the opposite, the lack there of. As one reads through the second half of the book he starts dishing out the ‘evidence’ for an “ultimate mind” which is the source of all creation, all of reality.  It all boils down to mainly the Argument from Intelligent Design, perhaps one of the worst ever contrived  but at the same time one of the  most ‘popularly successful’ arguments for the existence of deity.  In short, the argument goes: Look around you, everything has structure, is very complex and looks designed, there for only a conscious intelligent mind could have created it. Even Flew leaves small hints to this lack of evidence in his conclusions which  have the following feel to them: “these things that we only know about – the origin of life; the rules of reality; structured complexity, emergence of consciousness -  i.e. the  things that  we do not currently fully understand seem unfathomably natural, so the only possible cause or explanation is that of  an ultimate mind, a conscious god…“. It is not at all made clear why, when things seem currently unfathomable to humans, their only possible explanation is that of a creator god. Also, these are problems, not proofs.

All and all its a good read though and better than some I have read like Ray Comfort who’s simplistic views and lack of philosophical thinking makes reading tedious and frustrating. Readers from the creationism side is sure to enjoy it.