Why did Mr. Antony Flew recant his atheist beliefs and now believes in a being higher than us?

Question

Im posting this question here because a person in the biology section was not happy where i posted this question.

Answer 1

He re-thought his arguments to become a believer.

Answer 2

Flew is just rubbing salt into the would-be rational theist's wounds.

He is taking two concepts from the philosophy of religion (the rational examination of religion) to their logical extremes. I refer to The God of the Gaps and The God of the Philosophers.

The God of the Gaps is the concept of God used to 'explain' any gaps in knowledge. If we don't know how life began, GoG began it. If we don't know how the universe began, GoG began it. When you think about it, God has *always* been GoG - He has always been the explanation of things we lacked an explanation for, and as scientific knowledge has grown GoG's explanatory power has shrunk but has not yet shrunk to nothing.

GoP is the concept of God that remains when the abstracting process of philosophy has done its work. GoP is the purely *formal* concept of God, the concept of God, that is, with minimum *content*. GoP is at the other extreme to the God of the Old Testament - the suspiciously human-like God - the God who has a personality and about whom so much can be said, until reason is brought to bear upon claims about Him. As the full-blown God the Person is eroded away by rational criticism He becomes less the God the unthinking believer believes in and ultimately becomes the God only a philosopher could love.

Thus GoP and GoG ultimately merge to become a God about whom almost nothing can be said and whose only role is to explain the two big questions science has not yet explained.

Flew no longer an atheist? I guess it's a matter of definition.

Answer 3

Well I heard him on the radio when he "recanted". He said that he followed Socrates injunction to "follow the argument where it leads" and he just couln't explain the universe without God.

But don't think he'll be nipping down to church anytime soon. The concept of "God" he came up with wasn't intelligent, let alone omniscient, wasn't omnipotent and far from being the source of all morality had no moral input at all.

It just seems like bad thinking to me. He has discovered an "I-don't-understand-this-bit" and called it "God".

Answer 4

properly, it is greater complicated than may well be effectively defined right here, yet a rapid synopsis and a link could suffice: in reality, Flew, long term supporter and defender of atheism, reported which you would be able to fairly presuppose and undertake an atheistic perspective till rather evidence of the life of god sufraced. besides the fact that, he claims to have reconsidered this unique place in mild of specific philosophical and scientific issues. He says, basically, that his nevertheless does not have faith in an afterlife, and that his god isn't purely like the christian or islamic gods, which he refers to as despotic. rather, his thought of god is what he calls a "first reason" god. extraordinarily, he reported "My one and purely piece of correct evidence [for an Aristotelian God] is the apparent impossibility of offering a naturalistic thought of the beginning from DNA of the 1st reproducing species ... [in actuality] the only reason which I even have for beginning off to think of of believing in a time-honored reason god is the impossibility of offering a naturalistic account of the beginning of the 1st reproducing organisms." To me, it appears like he bought out. Like, you're actually not gonna grow to be commonplace for professing atheism with out pondering issues like evolution and the beginning of guy. Now swiftly, after acheiving acceptance and fortune with one thought, you are going to recant and part with the competition? some thing right here smells fairly fishy... edit: playstation . NIKKI, it is for you: AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! you rather have faith that? oh, you undesirable undertaking, they should are turning out to be the techniques-washer...I propose, the church...on you rather early. i will actual say, i'm sorry on your loss.

Answer 5

He's getting older, nearer to death...