If Ravi Zacharias, John Frame, John Stott, or CS Lewis (deceased) had suddenly announced they were abandoning the Christian faith in favor of atheism, it would make headlines overnight.
However, that is -uh, sorta- what has happened with one of the worlds most outspoken and quoted atheists. Anthony Flew , the celebrated British philosopher and now ex-atheist has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Flew contends that a super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature.
Flew has not become a Christian. Rather, his belief in God is a kind of deism, where God remains uninvolved in the details of people's lives. He credits his changed mind interestingly enough, to an OLD OLD OLD argument that Flew himself has "disproved" many times over the years. The argument from design goes back at least to the writers of Romans and Psalms, was codified by Aquinas, and states that the complexity of the universe itself argues for a creator.
Sir Fredrick Hoyle , the British mathematician and physicist who coined the term "big bang" for the theory of an explosion as the beginning of the universe, came to a similiar non-orthodox belief in God toward the end of life.
This just reaffirms my view that dogmatic atheists hold their views not because "science" demands it, but for other, non empirical reasons.
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