But what if it's true?
This is from Flew in 2001:
"Richard C. Carrier, current Editor in Chief of the Secular Web, tells me that "the internet has now become awash with rumors" that I "have converted to Christianity, or am at least no longer an atheist." Perhaps because I was born too soon to be involved in the internet world I had heard nothing of this rumour. So Mr. Carrier asks me to explain myself in cyberspace. This, with the help of the Internet Infidels, I now attempt.
Those rumours speak false. I remain still what I have been now for over fifty years, a negative atheist. By this I mean that I construe the initial letter in the word 'atheist' in the way in which everyone construes the same initial letter in such words as 'atypical' and 'amoral'. For I still believe that it is impossible either to verify or to falsify - to show to be false - what David Hume in his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion happily described as "the religious hypothesis." The more I contemplate the eschatological teachings of Christianity and Islam the more I wish I could demonstrate their falsity.
I first argued the impossibility in 'Theology and Falsification', a short paper originally published in 1950 and since reprinted over forty times in different places, including translations into German, Italian, Spanish, Danish, Welsh, Finnish and Slovak. The most recent reprint was as part of 'A Golden Jubilee Celebration' in the October/November 2001 issue of the semi-popular British journal Philosophy Now, which the editors of that periodical have graciously allowed the Internet Infidels to publish online: see "Theology & Falsification"."
The moment . . . the very MOMENT . . . that a debater goes ad hominem reveals that (1) he feels terribly threatened and (2) he does not feel comfortable merely arguing the factual/logical case.
All a positional proponent needs do is argue his own case. The use of ad hominem attacks against foes is a giveway about the weakness that the proponent feels about his own case.
Doesn’t matter if we’re talking pro or anti theism, pro or anti evolution, pro or anti ANYTHING. Any topic, anywhere, any time.
It also makes profound statements about someone’s character, too. And those statements are not positive.
So he became an atheist at about age 30? So in his real prime, he was presumably a Methodist, like his father (not necessarily, of course, but it seems most likely; in any case, by his own account, not an atheist).
Unless you and Dawkins have strong backgrounds in gerontology and have examined and tested Flew, claims of senility are a really cheap shot!