The Story of Antony Flew

Antony Flew spent most of his life as an Atheist. In fact, he wrote many books on the subject. One book in particular titled the presumption of Atheism and other Essays was considered a major boost to the new Atheist movement. 

Antony also loved to debate. He spent over two decades debating with noted theologians on the populous stage. One aspect of the debate process is that each side delivers written notes on the items they will be discussing in order to prepare your own points of view.

So Antony and his opponents would hash out all of the nuance of their position. Often times the subject matter would end up being repetitive. So much so, that Antony often functioned on auto-pilot, not giving any credence to the strength of the position on the opposite side. He held an a-priori view for Atheism. In other words his mind was already made up and there was no way that he could be convinced otherwise, no matter how strong the opposition to his worldview was. One day, all of that changed.

What the general public did not know, was while Antony was often hostile with his opponent on the stage, off the stage, he was a kind and gentle person. Many Christian theologians befriended him and their discussions were on a more gentle tone and deeply probing  the mathematical improbability of non-guided processes being able to account for all of the complexity we see as reality.

In 2004 philosopher Antony Flew, one of the world's most prominent atheists, publicly acknowledged that he had become persuaded of the existence of God. Not long before that, in 2003, Flew and Christian philosopher Gary Habermas debated at a Veritas Forum at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. Habermas, perhaps the world's leading expert on the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus, made the case for rational belief on the basis of the reliability of the evidence. Flew argued for alternative understandings of the evidence presented. For two-and-a-half decades Flew and Habermas have been in friendly dialogue about the plausibility of the resurrection and the existence of God.

In an interview with Atheist turned Christian author Lee Stroble, Flew gives the reason for this dramatic change in his worldview. “I suppose that it has been all of these biological studies and discoveries about the chemistry. Yes it is the integrated complexity of the real world (particularly as Einstein discovered) that is inordinately greater to posit that there is an intelligent design behind it all. To me, that argument is much stronger now than when I held to an Atheistic perspective.”  It appears that there was a direct correlation of viewpoint that Antony became willing to think about these things from an abductive point of reasoning, when he had not done so before his discovery. He may have stated that he was willing to look at the evidence objectively, but in reality he was denying it, until he willingly thought abductively.

His conversion to God-belief has caused an uproar among atheists. They have done all they can to lessen the impact of his famous conversion by shamelessly suggesting he's too old, senile and mentally deranged to understand logic and science anymore. A person who had been their poster boy for naturalism, instantly became their nemesis.  So they had to do anything possible to discredit him, whether it was true or not.