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Why Anthony Flew went from atheist to theist?


Relam

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That's easy ... he took one Flew over the cuckoo's nest ...

~

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3 hours ago, Relam said:

Why Anthony Flew went from atheist to theist?

Hi Relam

I would tend to think that it was a personal choice, and not knowing him personally have no idea but it is his choice to make. Why is it significant to you and how does it impact your life?

jmccr8

 

 

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34 minutes ago, jmccr8 said:

Hi Relam

I would tend to think that it was a personal choice, and not knowing him personally have no idea but it is his choice to make. Why is it significant to you and how does it impact your life?

jmccr8

 

 

Just confusing. Why such a hardcore atheist who wrote many books on nonexistence of god started to believe in God in the end. Fear of death or something more?

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2 hours ago, third_eye said:

That's easy ... he took one Flew over the cuckoo's nest ...

~

He literally flew from atheist to theist :D

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24 minutes ago, Relam said:

He literally flew from atheist to theist :D

I don't think it is such that great a deal that you think it is to you or 'God' ... :lol:

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[00.03:58]

 

~

 

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17 minutes ago, XenoFish said:

Does it even matter why? 

Of course,even the cucko matters

 

24 minutes ago, third_eye said:

I don't think it is such that great a deal that you think it is to you or 'God' ... :lol:

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[00.03:58]

 

~

 

Great info about fricking cuckoo :tsu:

I finally found meaning of life

Edited by Relam
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1 minute ago, Relam said:

Great info about fricking cuckoo :tsu:

I finally found meaning of life

Don't go trying to fly off the roof of any tall buildings now ...

~

Edited by third_eye
keyboard stutter
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Seriously?

It was a slow process. He wasn't actually an atheist, he was an agnostic, but preferred to reserve the word for what he thought Huxley had originally intended, so he was a hedge-word atheist who didn't correct people when they dropped the hedge word.

And he didn't end up a "theist" in any usual sense; he was last sighted as a deist (no divine revelation, no divine involvement in human affairs, and no survival of the human mind after death).

The precise sequence of events is tedious, but the turning point probably was when he realized there was a (possible) technical flaw in the short paper that had made him world-famous decades before. That didn't in itself turn him around (since he was in substance an agnostic, there'd be nothing new in the possibility that a kind of god could exist), but it got the ball rolling, IMO.

Anyway, he got interested in Einstein's ideas about good order in the universe being the product of some sort of mind. Flew was especially taken with the biological perspective on that. After an embarrassing (I think) flirtation with Behe's ideas of irreducible complexity (supposedly His Unholiness Richard Dawkins himself straightened Flew out about Behe), Flew accepted evolution by natural selection, bit still saw a role for a mind in the first life form and the complexity of the genetic code itself.

Meanwhile, the clock was ticking, and Flew became more and more compromised by advancing dementia (good chance that it was Alzheimer's, but regardless, it was a long time coming and devastating once it passed a certain point). In his last years before instutionalization, he was "handled" by Christian friends he'd met during debates years before. With friends like that, he didn't need enemies.

The "World's most famous atheist now believes in God" promos were the work of those friends. He "wrote" a book with their help; smart money says he didn't do much of the writing, because he probably couldn't read with comprehension. Very sad.

I hope somewhere in all that is a pointer to what you're looking for. A series of three blog posts on the various points raised can be found here:

https://uncertaintist.wordpress.com/tag/antony-flew/

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