Philosopher Antony Flew Dies at 87

Noted atheist became a deist. He was lauded by Christians, but never joined them.

Ted Olsen

Antony Flew was one of the most famous philosophers of his day—and also once the most famous atheists. But even in such a role he was no Dawkins or Hitchens: he argued on pragmatic grounds for religious instruction in British schools, for example, and admitted that there was considerable evidence pointing to Jesus’ resurrection.

Still, it came as a surprise to many when, in 2004, he decided God must exist after all. Flew was quick to assert that he was merely a deist and did not believe in a God of revelation. “But it seems to me that the case for an Aristotelian God who has the characteristics of power and also intelligence, is now much stronger than it ever was before," he said. He couldn’t accept Christianity, he said, “due to the problem of evil.”

Response was overwhelming. A New York Times Magazine profile suggested that Flew was merely going dotty in his old age. Jay Leno joked, “Of course he believes in God now. He’s 81 years old.”

Biola University, meanwhile, gave him an award for his "lifelong commitment to free and open inquiry and to standing fast against intolerant assaults on freedom of thought and expression." This magazine gave him the 2008 Christianity Today Book Award in Apologetics and Evangelism, with the judge in that category saying his book There Is A God put other apologetics works to shame.

Flew died, apparently still a deist, April 8. As he told Christianity Today in 2005, he hoped that would be the end of it. “I don't want a future life,” he said. “I have never wanted a future life.”

Obituaries: The Times, The Telegraph, The Guardian.

Comments

This is sad news, but I am confident he has gone to his reward. What an intellectual giant with an enormous heritage left behind.

Rich

He set an example for honest inquiry. Even though he appeared to remain in the deist camp, that was quite a change for a man so entrenched philosophically in unbelief. The evidence persuaded him, and the evidence is compelling. Honest questions are the beginning. May he be remembered as a man who had the courage to follow the evidence. "When you seek me with all your heart, you will find me" says the God of revelation. Perhaps he sought a private moments with Him. Farewell.

Guess Professor Flew knows the truth now!

Wouldn't you like to be a fly on the wall and hear God's reply to Prof. Flew when he tells Him He doesn't exist?

Interesting back story on Flew from the Evangelical Philosophical Society http://bit.ly/EPSFLEW

Who among thinkers (many of them are Christian believers) can forget the name of this former notorious atheist-turned-deist-turned-theist Anthony Flew?

By thinkers I mean those, who like Flew, listen to Socrates' advice to "follow the argument where it leads." And where did the argument lead Flew except to the realization that there must be a God out there who is responsible for the intrinsic design of the universe, whom philosophers call as the First Cause.

My only frustration is that Flew did not live longer enough to finally follow the argument beyond the Aristotelian limit, w/c, I believe, basically runs short of the full import of the argument, simply because he did not give way to the argument put forth by divine revelation sufficiently recorded in the pages of Holy Scripture. Nonetheless, by following the argument, at least to a certain limit, he only proved himself to be far better off than than most of his former colleagues in the godless world of atheism - including the great Bertrand Russell and other atheists of lesser lights like the obscurantists Richard Dawkins and Samuel Harris.

Edwin Vargas
Christian & Postmodern Theology Examiner at Examiner.com

There are flies in heaven?

@John Rupert: "There are flies in heaven?" Yeah, how else do you account for the fly strips there? ;-P

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Philosopher Antony Flew Dies at 87

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