There is a God

I met Anthony Flew at a number of conferences in the late 1980s and always enjoyed his rigorous approach to any issue under examination. I have a number of his previous books, and until 2004 his reputation was that of the most articulate and thorough atheist of his time. In this book, he explains how he changed his mind. One of his first important publications was Theology and Falsification, a paper presented at a meeting of Oxford University's Socratic Club chaired by CS Lewis. The editor, Roy Abraham Varghese, explains Flew's significance in the history of atheism as quite central - it was both systematic and comprehensive, based on his interpretation of relevant evidence at the time. It is important to note that he still denies the existence of an afterlife, but arrived at a view not dissimilar to Einstein. One of the stages on the way was his agreement that the 'monkey theorem' - that a monkey would eventually be able to write a Shakespearean sonnet - was a load of rubbish. He comes round to the position, shared by many influential scientists, that a rational universe springs from a divine Mind. He also accepts the argument for fine tuning and the origin of the laws of nature in the divine Mind. All this is carefully argued, as one would expect, and in the appendix he considers NT Wright's understanding of Jesus and the origins of Christianity. In this book, one sees none of the vitriol of the new atheists but rather a careful consideration of competing arguments.