Atheist loses mind, becomes theist

In the New York Times Magazine on Sunday (November 4) there appeared a lengthy article about Antony Flew, a professor of philosophy who taught at a variety of universities in the U.K. I'd heard of Flew a few times, probably because he was a favorite son among atheists (i.e., I can't place precisely where I'd heard of him). As the NYT Magazine article makes clear, he rose to fame in the atheist world initially because of his essay, "Theology and Falsification," in which he makes a clean little argument (1055 words, according to MS Word) about why the existence of some kind of deity can neither be proved nor disproved.

Anyhow, a few years ago, Flew announced that he was more a less a theist, an event which caused quite an uproar among folks who follow these sorts of things. And this fall, a book that Flew is the co-author of, There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, is being released. The article in the NYT Magazine makes it pretty clear that Flew has been subtly (but not apparently maliciously) manipulated by a number of Christian scholars (some in the sciences, some in the humanties). Further, his co-authorship of the book in question is likened to that of a star athlete who has a ghostwriter pen an autobiography. Worse than all of this, it appears that Flew is sinking slowly into dementia, and is being used by these Christians to advance their agenda via a very weird appeal to an authority they would never have considered an ally while his mind was sharp.

Very sad.

(Via Metafilter, like so much else that's good on the Web.)

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