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SOPHIA (2009) 48:215216
DOI 10.1007/s11841-009-0091-x
Review of Antony Flew (with Roy Abraham Varghese), There is a God: How the Worlds Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, New York: HarperOne, 2007, ISBN 978-0-06-133529-7, hb, 222pp
Reg Naulty
Published online: 11 March 2009# Springer Science + Business Media B.V. 2009
Antony Flew has been a prominent philosopher in the Anglo-American analytic tradition for more than 40 years. He has published over 40 books, including two in support of atheism. The present book is an account of why he changed his mind.
It should be mentioned that Flew never felt any emotional need to believe. He never wanted to commune with God, he says. Instead, his motivation for remaining engaged in the subject was first of all prudential: if there is some great mind behind the universe, it is in our interests to keep on the right side of it. There was a moral reason as well: I should be glad to find what Matthew Arnold called the eternal not for ourselves that makes for righteousness.(p. 29) And there was plain curiosity: is there something else out there?
Well, why did he change his mind? Recent work on the origin of life had a lot to do with it, especially the DNA investigations:
Its the enormous complexity...