There Is A God

One of the more interesting and compelling books in the field of non-Christian apologetics was written by former atheist* Antony Flew, one of the leading atheist philosophers* of the 20th century. 

In May of 2004, Antony announced that he now accepted the existence of God based upon the “world picture” that had emerged from modern science: (1) that the universe was brought into existence by an infinite Intelligence; (2) that this universe’s intricate laws manifest what scientists have called “the Mind of God;” and (3) that life and reproduction originate in a divine Source.

There are many fine arguments that Antony makes in There is a God: how the world’s most notorious atheist changed his mind (2007); foremost and most compelling were that:

• design is apparent in nature, along with the fine tuning* of the universe – the anthropic principle, suggests the existence of a cosmic Designer
• the laws and regularities in nature can be best explained by a divine Mind
• there is no law of nature that instructs matter to produce end-directed, self-replicating life forms so how do we account for the origin of life from matter; stated differently, how can meaningful and semantic information emerge spontaneously from a collection of mindless molecules subject to blind and purposeless forces presents a deep conceptual challenge for the atheistic scientist…only blind and baseless faith in matter lies behind the claim that “bits of matter” can suddenly “create” a new reality that bears no resemblance to matter

On a final note, in appendix B, Antony has a dialogue on Jesus with N. T. Wright. Despite this winsome witness of N. T. Wright, Antony remained a mortalist* and deist*. If you are interested in compelling arguments from a non-Christian author, this is a very special work from a very influential, former atheist and is worthy of your review and reflection.

*NOTES:

1. Antony was not always an atheist; he was raised in a Christian home and was the son of a Wesleyan Methodist pastor.
2. In 1950 Antony authored the essay “Theology and Falsification” which became the most widely reprinted philosophical publication of the last half century. 
3. It is a hard fact that we live in a universe with certain laws and constants and that life would not be possible if some of these laws and constants had been different. 
4. A mortalist is a disbeliever in life after death.
5. His “pilgrimage of reason” led him to accept the existence of a self-existent, immutable, immaterial, omnipotent and omniscient Being; yet he does not believe in the Trinitarian Christian God.