http://news.aol.com/newsbloggers/2007/10/10/worlds-leading-atheist-now-believes-in-god/
For the past half century, the leading atheist in the world was philosopher Anthony Flew. He wrote over 30 philosophical works laying the intellectual groundwork for nonbelief. He debated Christian apologists. He was widely cited in atheist literature and at atheist conventions. What distinguished Flew was how comprehensive and fully-developed his atheist philosophy was. Other philosophers, such as Bertrand Russell and Martin Heidegger, espoused atheist beliefs but those beliefs were incidental to their philosophy. Atheism was Flew’s philosophy. HIs works such as Theology and Falsification and The Presumption of Atheism were considered classics of theist thought.Then Anthony Flew became a believer, and his book There Is A God describes his intellectual journey…
OK, so the World’s leading Atheist? Ummm… What about Dawkins? O’Hair? Robertson? Was there a vote? Did we all elect someone?And… didn’t we hear about this years ago? And isn’t Flew much more of a deist than a Christian (you wouldn’t know it from this article)?
Flew now advocates the teaching of “Intelligent Design” in the UK, too.
Without wishing to be rude, it occurs to me that one might start to hope there is a “god” when one reaches the later stages of one’s life. Personally, I would not wish to waste the last years of my life advocating that they teach lies and myths to children.
Holy crap, Dave, gotta give us heads up when it’s friggin’ Dinesh D’Souza. I need a moment to prepare.
Atheist toleration does not extend to former atheists.
No nimrod, atheist toleration does not extend to former atheists when former atheists start spewing Darwin’s deathbed conversion nonsense — as Flew has done.
Hmmm, why didn’t my blockquote work? I usually get that right.
“Atheist toleration does not extend to former atheists.” was from the article.
Dave…I believe you’re missing the point…
The truth of the matter is Anthony Flew had a change of heart at the end of his long life. With life’s lessons and experiences behind him, he became a theist…
In an attempt to ignore what he might be trying to teach you, you make a statement that he was really a “deist”…
One could make the argument that you are really a deist from a comment you made several months ago…
“We don’t know everything, but we know enough to say there is no God”…
At least he was honest enough to admit he could not falsify christianity…
And from one of your own sites…
http://www.secweb.org/index.aspx?action=viewAsset&id=138
There will no doubt be at least one comment stating he became an old kook or began to suffer from Alzheimer’s or something…
It’s to bad so many on this board have such closed minds that they can not look at his life and try to learn from the wisdom that life taught him…
It speaks volumes how so many have thrown Flew under the bus, since he changed his views, much the same way so many Sam Harris supporters decided to discredit him ever since he spoke his mind last weekend…
One “Flew” Over the Cuckoo Nest!
The religious stand to gain by building an idol for us to “worship” so that they can topple it, since we refuse to build one for ourselves. It is the only mode of thinking they can employ.
By asserting that Flew was somehow our “leader” for all of these years they can say to their children “see, even the atheist leader believes in god.” How is this really different from any other xian lie?
From the article, Flew’s words:
Sounds pretty deistic to me.
And looks like Dinesh is just trying to ride his coattails to sell his own book.
I don’t know if old age and any accompanying disease had anything to do with the *conversion*. But if I start talking religion in my aging years, someone please, take me out back and put me down.
Phreedm,
there are a lot of loyal Christians who had a change of heart and became atheists, are you open minded to them?
A million people I’ve never heard of changed their minds about their beliefs in the past while. Now I’ve heard the name of one of them.
This is not convincing me that I should stop rejecting arguments from authority, which is all that it is, as presented here.
Funny how Dinesh thinks such an argument should be effective against non-believers.
How strange that unearthing this ancient news (2004) is coupled with blatant promotion of D’Souza’s latest paperweight, What’s So Great About Christianity
The quotes Dinesh provides imply to me that Flew is a deist, not a theist, since his beliefs are apparently not based on any supernatural phenomena or revealed religion. Looking at quotes in his wiki entry make it seem like Flew is not even consistently deist.
Anyone who claims him as a Christian, let alone a theist is engaging in wishful thinking at the least, and is probably just Lying For Jesus.
“Atheist websites condemn him as an apostate.” Why do I suspect that ‘apostate’ is straight from Dinesh and not found on any atheist website with regard to Flew. Apostasy is usually defined as rejection of a religious belief, so where are the atheists who equate atheism and religious belief?
I’ve followed Flew many years. First of all, the guy is old and losing it. It’s kind of sad. His comments seem consistent with what I would expect from someone who knows he is near death and wishes he weren’t.
If you notice, he gave zero evidence to support his hope or belief there might be something after all. ZERO. He said nothing to refute his arguments for atheism. Why? Because he knows there is no logical refutation.
Now, if he came up with some new argument or evidence for why he decided to believe, he would have everyone’s attention. But no. He resorted to the “it’s so complicated there might be something out there” argument. His own writings refute that argument. (By the same reasoning, if God is so complicated, He must have had a creator too. It’s a play on the first cause argument that gets nowhere.)
Most atheists admit we can’t know everything. That’s no reason to make things up. I guess if you are old with the fear of death, making up things isn’t so bad. Hope springs eternal, even for Flew.
If someone wants to believe he will live forever on Sugar Mountain in the Sky, most of us see that as a comfort mechanism. Flew’s statement was more of an acknowledgment that we don’t know everything.
If someone wants to call the unknown god, that’s fine but most atheists see that as a classical “god of the gaps” cop out.
Believers, of course are jumping on Flew and pointing to him as an example of an atheist converted. Most atheists, on the other hand, have compassion for Flew. The guy is kind of senile at this point. He is nowhere near the great thinker he once was.
stilhorn,
Clearly he is not. Most every atheist here is a Christian apostate. Phreedm does not respect us enough to be honest with us nor to allow that we have good reason to believe as we do.
He has presumably converted no-one in all his time here, yet he won’t give up. His only value is to be a practise target for those just coming into their ability to argue against apologists. And keep the comment counts up, if you value quantity over quality.
What,
That was what I was thinking also; One Flew went to the Cuckoo’s nest, that doesn’t change the fact the nest belongs to cuckoos.
karen wishfully asked,
But if I start talking religion in my aging years, someone please, take me out back and put me down. No such luck karen, you are too much of a treasure, we would need to try deprogramming with massive doses of truth and reality.
Oh christian it anyway, who gave me the blockquote disease?
Interesting stuff. On a side note i had an uncle who used to be a surgeon, He died thinking he was admiral nelson. Moral of the story; Even smart people lose their minds.
(of course, Maybe he just wanted to sell more books. Id proclaim to be “christian” if it would earn me a couple of million)
The “will to live, or self preservation instinct” includes reaching for ANYTHING that might prolong ones life. I don’t put much faith in doctors, but they probably would be the ones I reach for when dying.
Maybe he just wanted to continue the never ending argument, to ensure the argument continued after his death.
Maybe he was baiting the opposition.
The first lesson of debate, is to master defending an idea you DON’T believe in.
Whatever: a life of rational, intellectual, well expressed beliefs, is not wiped out by one death bed statement.
This is just the kind of thing evangelicals love. If you ever hung out with any born agains, you realize that they have a contest to see who was worse before they got saved. They say things like, I used to do drugs, beat my wife, neglect my kids, hold up gas stations, and then ….. I got saved. I always respond by saying, wow, I’ve never done any of those things, that’s really immoral!
pha
Whenever someone tells me that they gave up alcohol or drugs after “finding jesus” I always tell them that they have just switched one drug for another. Most are absolutely gobsmacked when they hear that.
Headline will someday read:
Few believe in God. Who is he?
Comment from: stilhorn
I like to think I am…are you?
Comment from: alexatheist
So…? You call it a drug. You of all people should know what it’s like to live each day, feeling like their’s something missing…
How do you know that simply because someone found Jesus, that they aren’t more complete…?
What exactly am I missing?
Your question implies that the nonreligious are incomplete which just isn’t the case. Just becasue you feel like you need religion doesn’t mean that everyone does.
so what’s so hard to understand?
flew began having doubts at age 81 about 3 years ago. so he’s obviously become somewhat delusional with age. so have my parents who are both over 80.
at least he kept his wits about him until recently, unlike many religious who spend their whole lives delusional or become delusional at a much younger age. kind of like some who frequent here ( hint: see above 2 posts)
damn alex you slip one in on me. correction (see 2 posts above alex’s)
Comment from: alexatheist
Your question implies that the nonreligious are incomplete which just isn’t the case.
Not exactly…you claim someone merely changes one drug for another…how do you know?
but interesting way to interpret it.
How does one know if they are missing something…? One would need to have an open mind to even begin to believe that they were…
Wow…did I ever predict that one…
How arrogant and closed minded to believe Flew has lost his marbles…
So much for treasuring our seniors…more of atheistic morality…?
I don’t KNOW, and never claimed to KNOW, because I have never had an addiction to alcohol, drugs, or religion. However the false comfort and good feelings offered by any of these three things are well documented as is their addictive power.
If I was missing the religious part of me then I would simply become religious. I don’t have the need and am therefore not incomplete.
Most people on this board did have religion at one time or another in their lives and they have abandoned it through reason and I doubt that they now feel “incomplete”. We don’t all have a god shaped hole, phreedum.
As far as having an open mind I have told you in previous posts that when it comes to religion I have a very closed mind. I prefer to deal with facts and reason which have sealed my mind tight when it comes to religion and the only thing that could crack the seal would be if jesus returned from the clouds, zeus came down from Mt Olympus, or mohammed flew back down to earth on his winged horse. Until any of these things occur my mind will remain impervious to religion.
My father-in-law lost it before he died in his 80’s. He had been an atheist from a fairly early age, but something went wrong in his brain and he often kind of slid back in time. He kept wandering off, always looking for the barn which hadn’t been a part of his life for about sixty years.
Along about this time he began to express the fear that he was going to hell. His daughter took this as a sign that he had repented. He also kept asking for a cigarette and he hadn’t smoked in forty years. She, of course, being a chain smoker insisted that he’d wanted to smoke all along. She also gave him cigarettes and he smoked them.
Needless to say, she is a xian. She read into the man’s jumbled mind what she wanted to believe. It was clear to the rest of us that he wasn’t rational.
Xians see what they want to see. I really don’t understand why, with all that faith they say they have, why they need more, but whatever . . .
GF&G
Religion – the ultimate tea leaves?
More disrespect for atheists, from the troll.
Treasuring seniors has nothing to do with patronising them or supporting delusions they may have acquired as their mental capacity decreases.
Neither should we be expected to patronise the religious and their delusions.
There have been any number of famous and accomplished scientists, who late in life embarrassed themselves by credulous acceptance of one kind of woo or another.
Barring a breakthrough in medical science, quite a few of the people here will experience Alzheimers. I’d not wish it on anyone, not even a troll. Watching my parents, I always wondered how much anguish they felt as things slipped away. I never asked.
Flew is a philosopher, not a scientist. In fact, he seems to be a philosopher particularly uninformed by science and seems to ignore 200 years of scientific development.
So now he thinks he has found evidence of a gawd. Ha Ha.
Physicist Richard Feynman had little consideration for soft disciplines like philosophy, and he was right.
I find it interesting that Flew has found a deity as he ages. The exact opposite happened with my g-father. He had been an old school tent evangelist and hell-fire-and-brimstone preacher for more than 50 years. In the last few years of his life, he lost his god and the depression that he had struggled with all of his life, took over. He screamed against god and believed that his god could no longer forgive his sinfulness. Scared his followers and fellow clergy horribly!
As for phreedum “predicting” that someone here would claim disease or dementia as the cause of Flew’s conversion…get a grip, phre! That’s a case of predicting what is already known. Don’t go thinking that you can take over a corner of Jean Dixon’s market.
He probably just needed money and knows the easiest way to make it is by deceiving people. Isn’t that why we have all these Xtian messes anyway?
I’ll never sell out.
From my understanding of arguing with xians who thinks Flew became a xian I accept he became a deist/theist and he personally interprets their is design in our universe so that brings him to a god belief. I don’t tend to argue with Deists often because when they say “god” they generally mean the spark of the universe and everything in it. They also debase the idea that god inspired any holy books so we agree on a definition of what god is.
Comment by Alexatheist
Please document the “false comfort” and addictive power of religion…?
So atheism played a part in the Cleveland shooting just the way it did at the Columbine shootings…
Let’s see . . . this hand or that hand? There’s Flew and on the other hand Mother Theresa.
Yep, a bunch of christian bigots pushed and pushed on an atheist until he snapped and took a few of his tormenters out.
Come to my house and push me around, and see if YOUR ass doesn’t get shot!
Phucking asshole.
Sounds like it was bullying that did it just like at Columbine. A bunch of xian students showing their “love” for a kid who was different and the kid just had enough. I don’t think that what he did was right but if I had ever been bullied to that extent in school who knows what I would have done. People can only take so much before they fight back.
We might say:
One Flew in the Cuckoo’s Nest.
bernarda,
That is indeed a good description!
Ah…how convenient…let’s totally leave the lack of belief out of the equation…
The kids writings tell a different story though…
So where was the compassion for the wife of the preacher who shot her husband last summer? I don’t remember anyone using your “bullying” defense…
I’m sure the atheist who set himself on fire in California last summer was also bullied…
Spander…this post is for you.
I dare you to go watch this new movie…
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=071011133309.vhjahw6y&show_article=1
It will show you exactly why I call your income “blood money”…
I had compassion for the preacher’s wife as I would any woman who is abused. I never blamed her religion for her actions but I do think that it may have offered her justification.
This kid did what he did not becasue he was an atheist, or listened to marilyn manson, or wore black clothes, but becasue he was the victim of repeated bullying. Why didn’t the parents of these bullys teach their kids not to pick on this kid who was different? I’m not making excuses for a kid who obviously had lots of problems but again I must say that humans can only take so much bullying before they fight back towards the aggressors. When I was in school there was a kid who teased me everyday in the play yard because my friends were all girls and I “talked funny”. One day I had had enough so I punched him square in the nose and he hit the ground screaming. The teachers had been witness to his bullying and sided with me so the bully was paddled in front of the whole class (remember when that was allowed?) and I was not punished for hitting him. The bully never bothered me again.
How is this a form of Atheism?
phreedm
I hope you check out the way all your customers make their income and know for sure that when you receive payment from them that you aren’t receiving any blood money.
Phreedm!!!
Theism is irrational! There is no objective foundation for it! Nothing supporting it to be other than belief! It is not “knowledge”.
Therefore, how are we to be “open minded” to those that succumbed to their gullibilities and irrational tendencies?
You say you wish people would be “more open minded” to the life of someone that decided to let irrationality slip into his life in this area of discussion. Yet, you only sound like a fool for saying such, since there is nothing to learn from him.
Unless it’s knowledge, then it’s not worth serious consideration. Beliefs aren’t to be “considered”, but merely tossed until they show they are worthy.
You disgust me with your bullshit, Phreedm. Time and time again you spew bullshit, as if you have something to offer us. You do not.
You have a perceptive mind, alatham. Thanks.
Can we call it a draw?? Atheism may have lost Flew, but xtianity lost Mother Teresa.
Yup, Mother Theresa loved to watch people suffer. She got off on it.