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There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind Paperback – November 4, 2008
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In There Is a God, one of the world's preeminent atheists discloses how his commitment to "follow the argument wherever it leads" led him to a belief in God as Creator. This is a compelling and refreshingly open-minded argument that will forever change the atheism debate.
- Print length256 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Publication dateNovember 4, 2008
- Dimensions5.31 x 0.58 x 8 inches
- ISBN-100061335304
- ISBN-13978-0061335303
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“A clear, accessible account of the ‘pilgrimage of reason’ which has led Flew to a belief in God.” — John Polkinghorne, author of Belief in God in an Age of Science
“Antony Flew’s book will incense atheists who suppose (erroneously) that science proves there is no God.” — Ian H. Hutchinson, Professor and Head of the Dept. of Nuclear Science and Engineering, MIT
“Towering and courageous... Flew’s colleagues in the church of fundamentalist atheism will be scandalized.” — Francis S. Collins, New York Times bestselling author of The Language of God
“A very clear and readable book tracing his path back to theism, revealing his total openness to new rational arguments.” — Richard Swinburne, author of The Existence of God
“This is a remarkable book in many ways.” — Huston Smith, author of The World's Religions
“This is a fascinating and very readable account …” — Professor John Hick, Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Research in Arts and Social Sciences, University of Birmingham
“A stellar philosophical mind ponders the latest scientific results. The conclusion: a God stands behind the rationality of nature.” — Michael Behe, author of Darwin's Black Box and The Edge of Evolution
“Antony Flew not only has the philosophical virtues; he has the virtues of the philosopher. Civil in argument, relentlessly reasonable….” — Ralph McInerny, Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame
“A fascinating record …it will come as a most uncomfortable jolt to those who were once his fellow atheists.” — Nicholas Wolterstorff, Noah Porter Professor Emeritus of Philosophical Theology, Yale University
“Flew’s exposition will be a source for reflective inquiry for many, many years...” — Daniel N. Robinson, Philosophy Department, Oxford University
“Flew couldn’t be more engaging and remain an analytic philosopher...” — Booklist
“In clear prose and brief chapters, Flew explains the four lines of evidence that convinced him....An intellectual conversion of great significance.” — Denver Post
“The most lucid and penetrative pieces of philosophical theology to appear in years, altogether brilliant.” — The Catholic Herald
“A most valuable and readable overview of the many evidential changes of landscape that 20th century science is furnishing to the oldest question in Western civilization: Is there a God?” — American Spectator
About the Author
Philosopher and former atheist Antony Flew set the agenda for modern atheism with his 1950 essay "Theology and Falsification," which became the most widely reprinted philosophical publication of the last half century. Flew has published over thirty books, including God and Philosophy, The Presumption of Atheism, and How to Think Straight. He spent twenty years as professor of philosophy at the University of Keele and has also held positions at Oxford, the University of Aberdeen, and the University of Reading. He now lives in Reading, England.
Product details
- Publisher : HarperOne (November 4, 2008)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 256 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0061335304
- ISBN-13 : 978-0061335303
- Item Weight : 6.8 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.31 x 0.58 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #68,087 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #27 in Atheism (Books)
- #69 in Religion & Philosophy (Books)
- #122 in Religious Philosophy (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
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About the authors

Roy Abraham Varghese is the author and/or editor of various books on the interface of science, philosophy, and religion. His Cosmos, Bios, Theos, included contributions from 24 Nobel Prize-winning scientists. Time magazine called Cosmos “the year’s most intriguing book about God.” Cosmic Beginnings and Human Ends, a subsequent work, won a Templeton Book Prize for “Outstanding Books in Science and Natural Theology.” His The Wonder of the World was endorsed by leading thinkers include two Nobelists and was the subject of an Associated Press story. He co-authored There is a God—How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind with Antony Flew (a book translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Korean, Russian, and Arabic). His The Missing Link (2013), includes contributions from three Nobel Prize winners and scientists from Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, and Yale. Varghese was a panelist at the science and religion forum in the Parliament of World Religions held in Chicago in 1993 and an invitee and participant in the Millennium World Peace Summit of Religious and Spiritual Leaders held at the United Nations in August 2000. Varghese has been interviewed on numerous radio and TV shows. He has also been profiled in different print publications.

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Indeed, given his credentials, this is an amazing book about an amazing intellectual about-face. For over 50 years Flew was the number one proponent of atheism. And as a world class scholar with over 30 books on philosophy in print, he was one of the twentieth century's most imposing intellectual figures.
In this book we hear about the reasons why he has abandoned atheism and embraced its counterpart. The significance of this turnaround can be seen in part by the ugly attacks and bitter responses by fellow atheists. They have made it perfectly clear that Flew has committed the unpardonable sin here. Their crude and ugly attacks on him and his decision is a telling commentary on the intellectual shallowness, bigoted fundamentalism, and narrow-minded intolerance that characterises so much of the new atheism.
The first half of this book is a brief intellectual biography of Flew. Here we learn about how he was raised in a Christian home; his decision to embrace atheism at age 15; his career as a professional philosopher; his numerous important works on philosophy; his time as a Marxist; his encounters with such intellectual heavyweights as C.S. Lewis, A.J. Ayer, Gilbert Ryle, Wittgenstein, and others; his debates with Christian theists such as Lewis, Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, William Lane Craig; his debates with fellow atheists such as Richard Dawkins; and his six decades as a dogmatic atheist.
The second half of the book deals with why he finally felt compelled to abandon his atheism and embrace theism. He offers three main reasons for his defection, (or apostasy, as many fellow atheists regard his move). The first bit of evidence he cites is the fact that nature obeys rational and ordered laws. The second is the fact that we are intelligently organised and purpose-driven beings. The third is the very existence of nature itself. The brute evidence of nature, in others words, has led Flew to recognise that "the universe was brought into existence by an infinite Intelligence".
He expands these three points in some detail, and demonstrates how any open-minded examination of recent scientific discoveries can only point in one direction: that matter alone is not all there is, and a supreme intelligence must be directing what we observe in nature.
All the reasons offered in this book are based on an honest assessment of the evidence. Flew had made it a life habit to follow the command of Plato attributed to Socrates, "We must follow the argument wherever it leads".
Flew rightly complains that so many atheists are simply stuck in a narrow box, where prior faith commitments to naturalism preclude an honest evaluation of the evidence. It is so easy "to let preconceived theories shape the way we view evidence," he says, "instead of letting the evidence shape our theories". Flew's willingness as an honest atheist to follow the evidence where it leads finally led him out of the barren sands of atheism into the refreshing oasis of theism.
He notes that many leading scientists today "have built a philosophically compelling vision of a rational universe that sprang from a divine mind". Eminent scientists and scientific thinkers such as Max Planck, Erwin Schrodinger, Werner Heisenberg, Paul Davies, Francis Collins, John Polkinghorne, Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking all acknowledge that there must be more to reality than what is offered in the materialist worldview.
The various new discoveries - be they in astronomy, physics, cosmology, genetics or molecular biology - all demonstrate intelligence, purpose, order, design and complexity, the most obvious explanation of which is an intelligent designer.
Flew of course takes on all the various challenges to such thinking, be it the multiverse scenarios, the functionalism of Dennett, Stenger's notion of symmetry, or Dawkins' idea of selfish genes. Concerning the last of these, Flew had long been a critique of this idea. "Genes, of course, can be neither selfish nor unselfish," he says, "any more than they or any other nonconscious entities can engage in competition or make selections". Indeed, natural selection "does not positively produce anything. It only eliminates, or tends to eliminate, whatever is not competitive".
Even though this is a brief book of just 200 pages, the cumulative case for the inadequacies of atheism and the necessity of theism is here very nicely and compellingly made. And given the one making the case - the world's leading atheist for six decades - this book needs to be seriously read by everyone.
Flew makes it clear that he is not a Christian - at least as yet - but is basically a deist. Deism says that there is a creator God, but such a God has no ongoing relationship with the created order - a bit like an absentee landlord. He says his journey to theism was based on reason alone, not faith, and he has yet to decide about revealed religion.
He does inform us however that if he were to embrace a revelational religion, Christianity would be the best choice. Indeed, he finds the arguments for Christianity persuasive, and is now exploring the evidence for this as well. He is even impressed with the central truth claim of Christianity, the resurrection of Jesus. In fact, he allows New Testament scholar N.T. Wright to have a concluding chapter in this book, making the case for the resurrection.
So as an honest seeker, he is more than willing to consider the claims of Christ. But for the honest atheist, this book offers a persuasive case for the claims of theism. As Roy Abraham Varghese argues in another appendix to this book, "we have all the evidence we need in our immediate experience" for theism, and the only reason why people remain in atheism is a refusal to look at this evidence.
In this hugely important book Antony Flew challenges all of us - atheists especially - to honestly and sincerely examine the evidence, without preconceived biases and agendas. Genuine intellectual honesty demands that we indeed follow the evidence wherever it may lead.
His only son, Anthony Garrard Newton Flew, was born in 1923 and attended Kingswood School, which had been founded by John Wesley. And yet by the age of fifteen, Anthony had concluded that there was no God. His heart had never been strangely warmed. While he had learned critical investigation from his father, that same critical investigation led Anthony to reject his father's faith - partially because of the problem of evil. While Anthony never discussed his doubts with his father, by the time he was nearly twenty-three, the word had gotten back to his parents that he was an atheist. For nearly seventy years he pursued the philosophy of atheism, denying both the existence of God and the existence of an afterlife.
By the time his father died in 1962, Anthony was the leading champion of atheism, having published over thirty philosophical works. Anthony also participated in the Socrates Club, chaired by C. S. Lewis. His first paper defending atheism was presented at the Socrates Club. However, at 84, Anthony said no one is as surprised as he is that his denial of the Divine has turned to discovery. Yet Anthony contends that this does not really amount to a paradigm shift since his paradigm remains, along with Socrates, "We must follow the argument wherever it leads."
Anthony wrestled with such questions as: How did the laws of nature come to be? How did life originate from nonlife? How did the universe come into existence? Since the early 1980s, Flew began to reconsider the evidence. He came to believe that he had arrived at his conclusion regarding the nonexistence of God much too quickly, much too easily, and for the wrong reasons. It seemed to him that those who advocated the cosmological argument were providing scientific proof that the universe had a beginning. An infinite regress does not explain causation. The almost unbelievable complexity of DNA points to the fact that the universe in intricately purpose driven. Faced with the arguments of Intelligent Design, Flew has a new answer to the question "Who wrote the laws of nature?" He has concluded that there is a Divine lawmaker.
Varghese, who coauthored this book, is not impressed with the "new atheism." He references three of the "four horsemen," Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, describing them as sounding like fundamentalist preachers. Their books are fiery and there is no room for ambiguity. It's black and white. Either you are with them all the way or you are with the enemy. Ironically, Dawkins claims that Flew has committed "apostasy." Varghese replied, "It has perhaps never occurred to Dawkins that philosophers, whether great or less well known, young or old, change their minds based on the evidence."
Yet Varghese says the new atheists refuse to engage the real issues involved in the question of God's existence and seem unaware of new arguments generated within philosophical theism. Varghese concluded that something always existed. Take your pick: God or universe.
Flew claims that his pilgrimage has been of reason and not of faith. He has not yet made contact with the Divine Mind, but he concludes with the statement, "Someday I might hear a Voice that says, 'Can you hear me now?'"
Does this mean that Flew has been seeking God simply through his own rational process? The biblical doctrine of prevenient grace teaches that God makes the first move. While Flew claims that he has not yet heard from God, perhaps he has a preconceived notion of the voice of God. It is the Spirit of Truth which guides us into all truth (John 16:13). Flew now believes that the Christian religion is the one religion that most clearly deserves to be honored and respected, whether or not its claim to be a divine revelation is true. In an appendix, Flew dialogues on this possibility with N. T. Wright, claiming Wright presents by far the best case for accepting Christian belief that he has ever seen.
Flew believes that his father would be hugely delighted with his present view on the existence of a God. I pray that, in God's grace, Anthony will come to know the God of his father. Although he is now old, apparently he has not been able to remain in a state of departure from his training as a child.
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Dans cet ouvrage, l'auteur commence par nous raconter sa jeunesse. Fils de pasteur, il bascule dans l'athéisme pendant son adolescence, ne gardant de son éducation familiale que la certitude qu'il faut suivre les indices rationnelles là où elles conduisent, de manière dépassionnée. Il se retrouve, après ses études de philosophie, l'un des principaux défenseurs de l'athéisme en fourbissant toute une série d'arguments nouveaux en faveur de cette thèse.
Puis A Flew nous raconte comment, sur le tard, il mesure à frais nouveau certains arguments qui pointent vers l'existence de Dieu, arguments qui finissent, à ses yeux, par l'emporter.
Dans cet ouvrage, l'auteur nous donne un condensé remarquable du cœur d'un certain nombre d'arguments (soit qu'il a développé lui-même soit qu'il a étudié par la suite) pour et contre l'existence de Dieu, nuançant ces positions par ses propres réflexions. À lire par toute personne intéressée par la question de l'existence de Dieu, sans aucun doute. Les références sont également très intéressantes. Le tout n'est pas exhaustif (et ne prétend pas l'être) mais le style clair et toujours vivant de Flew font merveille. Très chaudement recommandé.
La préface et les deux annexes, écrites par deux autres contributeurs, sont également d'un très grand intérêt.










