Posted on 01/24/2014 7:51:27 PM PST by Enza Ferreri
British professor Antony Flew wrote over thirty philosophical works which established the foundations for atheism for half a century.
His 1950 paper "Theology and Falsification" was the most reprinted philosophical publication of the 20th century.
In December 2004 Flew announced in a symposium and subsequent video that he had completely changed his view and now, based on scientific evidence, believed that God exists.
In 2007 he wrote the book There Is a God (Amazon USA) (Amazon UK) , subtitled How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind.
This is the man without whose ideas the various Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Dennett, Wolpert, Stenger, (not to mention Christopher Hitchens and Pat Condell) et al, none of whom is a philosopher, would not have had rational arguments to support their faith: atheism.
So it's not surprising that, when on 9 December 2004 the international journalist agency Associated Press gave the world the news about the British Professor of Philosophy's "conversion" with the headine "Famous Atheist Now Believes in God: One of World's Leading Atheists Now Believes in God, More or Less, Based on Scientific Evidence", atheists became hysterical.
Roy Abraham Varghese, in his Preface to There Is a God, wrote:
"One atheist Web site tasked a correspondent with giving monthly updates on Flew's falling away from the true faith. Inane insults and juvenile caricatures were common in the freethinking blogosphere. The same people who complained about the Inquisition and witches being burned at the stake were now enjoying a little heresy hunting of their own. The advocates of tolerance were not themselves very tolerant. And, apparently, religious zealots don't have a monopoly on dogmatism, incivility, fanaticism, and paranoia.
"But raging mobs cannot rewrite history. And Flew's position in the history of atheism transcends anything that today's atheists have on offer."
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Welcome to Free Republic.
Nice to note your warm, modest, charitable manner too.
[ You admit to RESPECTING an atheist?
These people, including Penn Jillette, deserve no respect. Funny wisecracks do not redeem damnation by God. Giving even one of them respect is an insult to God. Please consider long and hard what you are doing. ]
Penn has mellowed out recently and has actually said he regrets attacking religious people as much as he did in his youth.
But hey, might as well revive an old thread on Free Republic in order to sling some mud around to make yourself feel better. What is a little Thread Necromancy amongst friends....eh?
For the record I despise atheists that want to exert the power of government to ban or crush religion. People like Richard Dawkins and Bill Maher are complete retards in my opinion because they want to use the power of big government to mess with people.
I respect Penn because he doesn’t believe in using Big government to tell people how to worship, while me may personally dislike religion, he doesn’t want to force his views under word of law onto others. I may not appreciate the wisecracks he may occasionally make, but he is not going to be petitioning the government to outlaw a religion any time soon because he is internally consistent to his own Libertarianism, unlike that fraud Maher who claims to be “Libertarian” but it nothing but a big government authoritarian control freak.
And that I can respect.
Well said.
Not to mention you can have respect for someone and not agree with a single thing they say.
“Only a fool goes to battle without a decent respect for the enemy” (I think it was Sun Tzu who said that)
As for the atheist...his first thought after realizing he wasn’t injured...”thank God I wasn’t injured....oh wait!”
Yes, I agree with that. Things have changed. We as a nation have rarely been so bitterly divided.
I sent a note to the mods that if you check this clown inforum you’ll see he’s been resurrecting several religion-related threads from a year or two ago.
This while he apparently just signed up today.
Sounds to me like a poor sore loser who got zotted some while ago and came back today to pose and mock.
Oh-—I just checked...he’s been shown from the building and back to his tomb....
[ Sounds to me like a poor sore loser who got zotted some while ago and came back today to pose and mock.
Oh-—I just checked...he’s been shown from the building and back to his tomb.... ]
I really have to wonder if such people are just disturbed or if they are being paid to go into forums and try to stir up dissent amongst the members of said boards????
Don’t know...
But you handled him with notable grace!
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