Professor Flew’s conversion

On December 9, 2004, major television networks and newspapers reported a rather unusual news story: An 81-year-old British philosopher, who had been well known for his defense of atheism for over 50 years, had declared that he now believed in the existence of God:

Famous Atheist Now Believes in God

Dec. 9, 2004 – A British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion of atheism for more than a half-century has changed his mind. He now believes in God more or less based on scientific evidence, and says so on a video released Thursday.

At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature, Flew said in a tele- phone interview from england. (ABC News)1

Despite his conversion from atheism to theism, Flew did not become a member of any religious body. He said that his position was best described as deism, which is usually regarded as being incompatible with such tradi- tional religions as Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Deism is the doctrine that, while God created the universe, He does not interact with His creation. He does not communicate with His creatures or intervene in human affairs. God created the universe but He has done nothing since then. Flew wrote, ‘while reason … assures us that there is a God, there is no room either for any supernatural revelation of that God or any transaction between that God and individual human beings’.2 _{So Flew came to believe in the existence of}

a God ‘who or which leaves [n]ature and its creatures (including human creatures) entirely to their own devices’.3 _{God is, according to Flew, purely}

an impersonal prime mover.

Flew contended that throughout his career in philosophy, he was guided by Socrates’ principle: ‘Follow the evidence wherever it leads.’ Thus he said that he had defended atheism for more than a half-century not because he was predisposed to it but simply because he thought that the evidence he had led to it. Similarly, on his own admission, he converted to theism, not because he started having sentiment toward theism but simply because he thought that the latest discoveries in science had led to theism.

While Flew’s conversion was surprising news for many people, it did not happen completely out of the blue. In 2001, it was rumored on the World Wide Web that Flew had converted to theism, more specifically to Christianity, which, among other traditional religions, he had been criti- cizing for many years.4 _{In response to this rumor, Flew wrote a small article}

for The Secular Web, a website dedicated to secular humanism. The title of the article was explicit enough to dispel the rumor: ‘Sorry to Disappoint,

but I’m Still an Atheist!’5 _{In that article, Flew contended that the only}

possible source of the rumor that he could conceive of was a piece that he had written a little while ago, which contained arguments that ‘could well disturb atheists’. Flew argued there that it was perfectly reasonable for theists to accept some important scientific discoveries without giving up their religious commitment. Consider, for example, the big bang. Many atheists think that there is a non-supernatural, scientific explanation of this event. They further think that even if a full explanation is beyond the reach of their capacities, the event does not entail the existence of God. However, at the same time, according to Flew, theists can rationally accept the big bang as an event that confirms their theistic understanding of the universe. Theism says that there was such an event, the beginning of the universe, initiated by God, and the big bang theory confirms that, indeed, the universe did have a beginning. A version of atheism that allows in this way that some theists are rationally justified in believing in the existence of God is called ‘friendly atheism’.6 _{Friendly atheism is based on the idea that}

being rationally justified in believing proposition p does not always entail or require that p is true. Suppose, for example, that my flight crashes into the sea and that after one week no one finds any survivors. Here my family is justified in believing that I am dead by now. However, suppose further that I am miraculously alive, floating on the sea waiting to be rescued. I am, then, of course, justified in believing that I am alive. This example shows that different people can be justified in believing in propositions that contradict each other. Friendly atheists say that while God does not exist and they are justified in believing that fact, there are some theists who are justified in believing that God does exist. Friendly atheism disagrees with ‘unfriendly atheism’, according to which no one is rationally justified in believing in the existence of God.

On another occasion, there was a rumor that Flew had converted to theism because he was convinced by one of the traditional arguments for the existence of God.7 _{According to the rumor, Flew wrote in a private letter}

to a fellow philosopher that he was convinced by the ‘Kala¯m cosmological argument’. As we will see in the next part of this book, the Kala¯m cosmo- logical argument purports to prove the existence of God, as a personal cause of the universe, through philosophical, mathematical, and cosmological reasoning. Flew later said that he did not remember having written such a letter and that he did not find the Kala¯m cosmological argument convincing.

The rumor about his conversion popped up again in 2003. This time, again, Flew denied it. When people heard the same rumor again in 2004,

they naturally expected that Flew would deny it soon. This time, however, he confirmed the rumor.

Some theists regard the conversion of one of the most prominent atheists as a great triumph for religious believers. For example, J. P. Moreland, a Christian philosopher, even says that Flew’s conversion is an event that itself supports belief in the supernatural.8 _{On May 11, 2006, Biola University,}

where Moreland teaches, awarded Flew the Philip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth. The award is named after a retired law professor who is regarded as the father of the contemporary ‘intelligent design’ move- ment, which promotes the idea that ‘certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection’.9 _{According to the university, the award}

was given to Flew for his ‘lifelong commitment to free and open inquiry and to standing fast against intolerant assaults on freedom of thought and expression’.

Atheists, on the other hand, claim that Flew’s conversion is far from a triumph for religious believers, because his deism is incompatible with traditional Judaeo-Christian-Islamic theism, nearly as much as atheism is. The only thing that deism and traditional theism share is the idea that some extraordinary being created the universe; they disagree on almost every other theological and metaphysical issue.

In 2007 Flew published, with Roy Abraham Varghese, a book entitled

There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind. In that book

Flew explained his new commitment to deism. He also expressed in the book some sympathy for Christianity, which many find perplexing because, again, deism is known for being incompatible with it. Subsequently, the

New York Times published an article by Mark Oppenheimer, which questions

the authenticity of the book.10 _{According to Oppenheimer, Flew did not}

remember some of the people that he mentions in the book. Oppenheimer points out that the book was not actually written by Flew himself even though it is presented as a first-person account of his life and philosophy. According to Oppenheimer, nearly the whole book was written by the co-author, Varghese. Flew did not deny this. He said openly, ‘This is really Roy’s doing’, and ‘He showed it to me, and I said OK. I’m too old for this kind of work!’ Varghese himself admits that the book was his idea and that he wrote a substantial part of it. Moreover, Bob Hostetler, an evangelical pastor and author, helped them in rewriting many passages to make the book more accessible.

Flew, however, rejected the criticism that he was manipulated by evan- gelical Christians:

My name is on the book and it represents exactly my opinions. I would not have a book issued in my name that I do not 100 per cent agree with. I needed someone to do the actual writing because I’m 84 and that was Roy Varghese’s role. The idea that someone manipulated me because I’m old is exactly wrong. I may be old but it is hard to manipu- late me. That is my book and it represents my thinking.11

Whatever the truth is behind the publication of the book Flew seemed to be clear about one thing: his conversion was triggered by discoveries in recent biological sciences. He came to subscribe to theism because he was convinced that the origin of certain biological features in nature can be explained only by reference to the acts of an intelligent agent rather than to undirected evolutionary processes. In this respect Flew’s conversion can be regarded as showing an affinity for the world-wide intelligent design movement. In fact Flew is one of those scholars who signed a letter in 2006 to demand that Tony Blair, then prime minister of the United Kingdom, include intelligent design in the science curriculum.

Flew died in 2010 without retracting his conversion to theism.