Famous atheist: "I now believe"
I'm not sure how famous Antony Few is to the general public, but ABC News reports,

A British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion of atheism for more than a half-century has changed his mind. He now believes in God more or less based on scientific evidence, and says so on a video released Thursday.

At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the cwillful actions of mporalomplexity of nature, Flew said in a telephone interview from England.

Flew said he's best labeled a deist like Thomas Jefferson, whose God was not actively involved in people's lives.

That's not precisely what Jefferson believed. Jefferson was a deist, yes, but what he scoffed at was divine miracles. Jefferson did affirm a doctrine of "providence," an involvement in the world by God in which God's plans and will are worked out through natural history and the deliberate actions of moral, if not overtly religious people. Anyway,

Flew told The Associated Press his current ideas have some similarity with American "intelligent design" theorists, who see evidence for a guiding force in the construction of the universe. He accepts Darwinian evolution but doubts it can explain the ultimate origins of life.

Well, Antony, you're only 81.One step at a time,one step at a time.

Speaking of intelligent design, my fellow Franklin, Tenn., blogger Bill Hobbs has a cousin named Jonathan Witt, who writes foir the Discovery Institute, a bastion of ID thinkers.

Jonathan has a blog and points the way to an interview with Flew published in the academic journal, "Philosophia Christi."

Jonathan also penned a reply to and critique of some objections to intelligent design made by Richard Dawkins, Stephen Jay Gould and others.

by Donald Sensing, 12/10/2004 09:12:23 PM. Permalink |