Atheism yields to reason
It was a long journey from denial to discovery, but the journey isn’t over yet. After seventy years of following where the evidence led, prominent atheist philosopher Antony Flew announced in 2004 that he had finally “discovered God.” The announcement rocked the world of fundamentalist atheism to its core. Now, in his 2007 book, There is a God: how the world’s most notorious atheist changed his mind1, Professor Flew more completely outlines the evidence and arguments that led him to repudiate atheism.
The scientific arguments supporting God’s existence presented by Flew are strikingly familiar to anyone who has followed the creation/evolution/intelligent design controversy over the last twenty-five years. He observes first that nature obeys discoverable laws that are mathematical in form and are finely tuned in degree. Secondly, it surprised Dr. Flew to discover that the chemistry of life, the DNA molecule for example, is intelligently organized and that life is purpose-driven. Lastly, he realized that the universe is not eternal but had a beginning and so it was caused to exist by something outside the universe. His was a pilgrimage, not of faith, but of reason, and, at long last, he “discovered” an infinite, intelligent “Mind” (a.k.a. “God”) behind the observable universe.
But why should it take Flew so long to come to a conclusion that many scientists see as obvious or even self-evident—that design and purpose in the universe originate in a transcendent, infinite God who really does exist? Flew admits to being largely unaware of the progress made by science since he published the conclusions of his earliest work in philosophy. Those conclusions became the mold which shaped how he interpreted all later evidence bearing on the reality of God. In other words, his a priori assumption of atheism prevented him from seeing where the scientific evidence actually led. He paints this error as “the peculiar danger, the endemic evil, of dogmatic atheism.” These are shockingly strong words from the former atheist and a candid admission of a lifetime of error.
Aldous Huxley, the troubled English essayist, once observed that “[t]he course of every intellectual if he pursues his journey long and unflinchingly enough, ends in the obvious, from which the non-intellectuals have never stirred.” This describes Flew’s intellectual journey well but fails to take into account the many people he has led into the error of atheism during his life. This is an unenviable record that he may one day be called to account for. And his journey is not over because, although he now believes God exists, he does not yet know the God of the Bible personally, and Flew does not “think of [himself] as surviving death.” So, what good is it to gain the whole world but lose your own soul? What is needed by Flew, now 84, and all who are still in denial, is not just a change of mind, but a change of destiny, and this only happens when, as Jesus says, you are “born again” (Jn. 3:3).
1 Antony Flew and R.A. Varghese, There is a God: How the world’s most notorious atheist changed his mind (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007).