"There Is A God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind" (page 2)

BurnTheShips

Does this make him an Apostate to other atheists?

This is kind of like Ray Franz getting the heck out of Bethel.

In that case this would be his own version of Crisis of Conscience.

beksbks

Sorry Open Mind, but just because you (and others like me) have never heard of him before, doesn't make him an unknown. He just travelled in different circles.

It does however make him something of a pompous ass, considering he was speaking of himself in the title of his book

BurnTheShips

We all know it couldn't be some unknown like Richard Dawkins, Bertrand Russell, Carl Sagan, etc.

Why not? Dawkins has been getting a bit on in years. He may have a death bed conversion.

inkling

Strangly enough, I first I heard of "The world most notorious atheist" was from his own shameless self promotion.

[inkling]

OM, I used to work in a book store, and the section I was in charge of included History, Religion, Philosophy, Social Studies, Anthropology..........etc. In other words, all the good stuff!! Anway, I have heard of Antony Flew, and read many a back cover.

But here is one of my own particular favorites

http://www.amazon.com/Divine-Revelation-Hell-Mary-Baxter/dp/0883682796

I had to restock this one often, I never did look to see if it was because of sales or theft. I suspect the latter.

B_Deserter

He probably fell into the various logical traps like proving a negative, Pascal's Wager, or other such nonsense.

Plus, the fact that he was 15 when he "became" an atheist strongly suggests that he never really thought about it that much at all, but was just rebelling against his father.

Open mind

Hey Kwin,

Re: the agnostic/atheist labels, here's a quote I found and it looks like you were right. Sagan liked to pin the label "agnostic" on himself.

In a March 1996 profile by Jim Dawson in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Sagan talked about his then-new book The Demon Haunted World and was asked about his personal spiritual views:

"My view is that if there is no evidence for it, then forget about it," he said. "An agnostic is somebody who doesn't believe in something until there is evidence for it, so I'm agnostic."

Although his definition of "agnostic" is the same definition many "atheists" would use to describe themselves. But hey, if that's what he liked to be called, no problem.

Anybody wanna argue about what a "cult" is?

Teezin.

OM

inkling

Oh, and here is a short clip of Dawkins talking about the book:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEPUn__hYso

[inkling]

Open mind

beksbks:

"here is one of my own particular favorites "

Shirley you can't be serious. (Can I call you Shirley?)

OM

BurnTheShips

He probably fell into the various logical traps like proving a negative, Pascal's Wager, or other such nonsense.

Plus, the fact that he was 15 when he "became" an atheist strongly suggests that he never really thought about it that much at all, but was just rebelling against his father.

Heh. How dismissive. I suspect Flew is much more familiar with these "nonsensical"philosophical constructs thatn any of us on this thread. His biography strongly suggests that his stance was not a casual rebellion against his father's beliefs, any more than Dawkins' own views are rebellion against his Anglican upbringing.

While an undergraduate, Flew attended the weekly meetings of C. S. Lewis's Socratic Club fairly regularly. Although he found Lewis to be "an eminently reasonable man" and "by far the most powerful of Christian apologists for the sixty or more years following his founding of that club," he was not persuaded by Lewis's argument from morality as found in Mere Christianity. Flew also criticized several of the other philosophical proofs for God's existence. He concluded that the ontological argument in particular failed because it is based on the premise that the concept of Being can be derived from the concept of Goodness. Only the scientific forms of the teleological argument ultimately impressed Flew as decisive. [3]
In God and Philosophy (1966) and The Presumption of Atheism (1984), Flew earned his fame by arguing that one should presuppose atheism until evidence of a God surfaces. He still stands behind this evidentialist approach, though he has been persuaded in recent years that such evidence exists, and his current position appears to be deism. In a December 2004 interview he said: I'm thinking of a God very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam, because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins. [4]

Check his bibliography.

Burn

"There Is A God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind"

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