Leading atheist followed the evidence — and discovered God

Long before today’s clamorous atheists (Christopher Hitchens, God is not Good; Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion; Sam Harris, The End of Faith, etc.) began filling bookshelves and public airwaves, there was one name that was synonymous, at least in England, with public atheism. That name was Antony Flew.

Flew was a philosopher who, in 1950, presented a paper to the Socratic Club (with C.S. Lewis in the Chair) at Oxford University entitled “Theology and Falsification.” It became the most widely reprinted philosophical paper of the last half of the 20th century.

But in 2004 Flew announced that he had changed his mind. Recent discoveries, in several different scientific fields, had convinced him of the existence of God. This occasioned quite a lot of public notoriety. “The world’s most notorious atheist changes his mind,” was a common newspaper headline.

Three years later Flew published his last book-length contribution to a debate that is as old as humanity. The book was called There is a God. It is a compelling story.