There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

This book by Professor Anthony Flew takes the reader onto his journey which lead him to the inevitable truth: there must be an intelligence behind nature's laws as revealed by the latest evidences of the sciences.

That is, of course, not to the likings of those who do not like this idea - let alone the evidences for it.

So, there are naturally those who try to lead the interested person's thoughts to such things as "senility" of the author, his "old age" as Richard Dawkins put it. Let me quote Roy Abraham Varghese: "True thinkers evaluate arguments without regard to the proponent's race, sex or age."

In this book you will find arguments, as said earlier, that lead to the conclusion of an intelligence behind nature's laws - if the reader will follow them. As for example, Professor Flew goes into the findings of protobiologists - Andy Knoll, professor of Biology at Harvard, and Antonio Lazcano, president of the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life - and not only cites from their works, but includes their findings into his argumentative framework. Or, for another example, he goes into details with the findings of George Wald, Nobel-Prize-winning physiologist, and David Berlinski, mathematician, dealing with the coding and information processing that is central to all life forms.

This list could be enlarged by names as Einstein, Hawking, Hume, Carl Woese et cetera pp . . .

So - if you are really interested in what a wise old man has to tell you about the reasons for the cause of his world view changes, I highly recommend this book to you.

This book is definently worth reading. I have spent lots of time the last year watching viedeos and reading books from the so called new atheists (or the 4 musceteers of atheism).

I have been continually strucked by the arrogance and disrespect that writers like Dawkins are showing against their opponent, it is therefore refreshing to read a book (even though it is ghost writed) from an atheist that changed his mind.

As you see online when you google around, it didn't took long for his once fellow atheists to attack his scientific or philosophic status. The man is to old, he doesn't know what he is talking about, he doesn't understand modern science and so on. These cind of typical statements from the new atheists are fluid on comments about this book. I have still to see christian academics using the "stupid" cind of argument on atheists, but it is a common way of criticising deists, theists, Id or creationists.

I found this book excelent, well written and very clear on its critique of Dawkins. Dawkins is funny when he is writing, he is using sarcasm for all its worth, and I enjoyed reading it, even though I never bought his argument. At the same time I found Dawkins extremly arrogant, disrespectful and to be more accurate: dishonest. Dawkins is critisising things he have no clue about: faith and religion. He is building up a caricatur of religion that most religious people themselves are not believing, or religious behaviour that almost none would identify themselves with (like murdering in the name of God), or critisising inconsistence in religious thoughts as if religious people are not aware of that cind of weaknes themselves (like theodice). Antony Flew is also mentioning this unhealthy attitude by modern atheists.

Antony Flew is doing a critique on a movement that he was a part of for most of his life. That alone is a good reason to read this book. But he is doing it in an excelent well written way. To hear about the change of mind from a person that have been in the middle of the modern atheist movement, inspired people like Dawkins, argued against well known christian apologetics (like CS Lewis), that have an intimate knowledge of key figures of modern philosophy (like Wittgenstein), well... that should make this book worth reading.

Why do atheists try to mark this book as a flop or Antony Flew as an idiot or to old? I must honestly say, I have no clue why? Whats lacking in todays debate about religion and atheism is more honest writers, writers that actually acknowledge that the question about God is to complex to be treated by atheist just as a something believed on by simple minded people. The idiot card, that many atheists are using against religious thinkers, are here sadly enough well to common.

The strength of this book is its urge to the reader to be humble about the big questions and dear to be honest about the facts, and follow them wherever they lead. Facts brought him to faith in some cind of God, is what Flew says, and this is not said by someone that just started to work on this question, but by someone that have spent most of his life on the question about God.

The big questions of life are way to complex to be handled in a perfect way by anyone. It is not possible for man to know everything. No one are able to be specialist in every branch of knowledge. There is a pattern in the reviews of books like this, those that give Dawkins 5 stars, are tending to give this book a hard hitting critique. Those that are believing in God, gives books like this 5. Well, since there is a hate it or love it attitude to this book, anyone interesting in modern atheist debate should read it.

Don't expect this book to answer all questions about God, it is a short overview of the path that Flew has walked in his life. It is also no introduction to scientific method, philosophy, theology or biology, he is only mentioning or passing through different schools. On those subjects that I have studied more(like Ludwig Wittgenstein) he is showing an excelent understanding, and that makes the other parts more thrustworthy. He is making it clear that this is a philosophical book, wich should be the branch of science (beside theology) best suited for the big questions. This is not a book on biology, wich is a branch of science that should be occupied on making clear statement on things measurable (like DNA or behaviour of Birds), and keep the mouth shot on other subjects (like the existence of God). So if you read that Antony Flew are not enough informed about the latest developement in modern biology, it is (even if its true) not a relevant critique on this book. He makes it also clear in the introduction, this is philosophy (and on that subject he is showing an excelent level of knowledge). Read this book as a philosophical testimony about God, based on an interpretation of facts, and how that brought Antony Flew to believe in God.

I also find this book well enough written, it is not making me laugh alot (as Dawkins is making me), most of the estethic of the language is also not impressing me (like it does in the writing of C S Lewis), but there is some passages that are well written. Still this book is worth reading, the level of arguments, knowledge and the logical structure of the book is definently on a level that makes this book to a book that I will recomend anyone that are interesting in the modern debate about God. Anyhow, a book like this sholdn't be measured on its estethic level (it is not a novel) but on the logic and substance of its argument, and here it is a well written, logical book, well worth the time reading both for people with good knowledge of philosophy and theology but also for laymen.

Never having encountered a book by the "world's most assertive astrophysicist" or one by the "world's zaniest zoologist", Flew's subtitle came as something novel. Compounded by the fact that i'd never heard of him - my not being a scholar in "atheism" - it would have been easy to pass this by as a crank's production. However, at the insistence of some respected colleagues, i was impelled to give it a look. It's difficult to impart what a stunning waste of time this little tome proved to be.

It's bad form to chide a man's account of his own life. After all, he's the one who lived it. However, even his account of his early life exhibits some glaring omissions. Raised by a Methodist family - his father was a Cambridge tutor in the sect - Antony went off to a boys' school for his secondary education. There, as a "unenthusiastic Christian", his faith eroded away - mostly due to the "wearying ritual" he encountered at Chapel. That's it. No other fundamental reason is given for his atheism, which he successfully concealed from his parents for many years. After some erratic efforts to become a philosophical scholar, Flew produced a paper, "Theology and Falsification", upon which he built his career. The "Falsification" bit was supposed to indicate his interest in science, and his desire to follow where the evidence might lead. If the remainder of the book is any indication, somebody changed the pointers along the track and Flew arrived at some never-never land.

As a "philosopher", of course, Flew need not be held to a fixed position once taken. He recounts his readings in philosophy and the encounters he had with notable people in the field. None of it, however, is used to expound on his self-professed lack of faith. Issues of gods, the universe, life or the world, never arise in this account. At least not until he attempts to explain his "conversion" - which is a bumbling failure.

To open his segment on "My Discovery of the Divine", Flew provides an update of Paley's "watch on the heath" concept, in this case with a satellite 'phone! From this, he works up a succession of ancient, weary arguments about Nature exhibiting "design" - Paley's contention, which Darwin ably dismissed over a century ago. Flew, apparently, has not caught up with the times. Worse, Flew also adopts Paley's notion of Nature's organisms having evolved for a "purpose". If ever an argument has been dispelled by science, teleology stands high in ranking. It's astounding to see anybody propose that fallacy in these times.

Along with these gaffes, Flew actually dredges up the old comparison about the odds of life emerging from material processes with the "monkeys typing the works of Shakespeare" fallacy. No greater misunderstanding of evolutionary biology could be displayed. There are those who claim that Flew was entering dementia when this book was written. While that remains unproveable, his lack of knowledge in fields relating to his arguments is glaring. Yet, he has no problem with out-of-context or irrelevant quotes being sprinkled throughout the text. His mental state is of no consequence, but it would have been kinder to himself and unsuspecting readers to have kept this empty dissertation under wraps. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]