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There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind

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Authors: Antony Flew, Roy Abraham Varghese
Publisher: HarperOne
Category: Book

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Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

11 reviews
Sales Rank: 13180

Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 222
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.6 x 1

ISBN: 0061335290
Dewey Decimal Number: 212.092
EAN: 9780061335297
ASIN: 0061335290

Publication Date: November 1, 2007
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Also Available In:

•	Paperback - There Is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind

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Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...

3 out of 5 stars

sadly, you won't learn much June 10, 2008
0 out of 3 found this review helpful

I have also read this book from cover to cover and I think that sadly it it is an illustration of the unproductive and often petty argument that flows back and forth between the 'new atheists', who (at the risk of oversimplification) object primarily to organised religion's insistence on compliance, and their opponents, who (see risk above) tend to recycle whichever of the 'cosmological' or 'argument from design' proofs of God they prefer. People seeking enlightenment as to the nature of atheism or theism will feel frustrated at the reliance in this book on the 2 proofs mentioned above. And if they get that far, they will feel downright disheartened at Varghese's anti-Dawkins piece in the Appendix, which is full of logical holes and indulges in the "what a silly argument!" nonsense that Dawkins is also prone to.

If you really want to understand the crux of the argument/s, without any polemic, IMHO you're better off reading Julian Baggini's succinct and thoughtful "Atheism - a very short introduction". It contains just enough to keep you pondering for years.

5 out of 5 stars

The most convincing riposte to Dawkins I have read. June 6, 2008
12 out of 14 found this review helpful

As a philosopher and teacher, I have read Flew for 20 years. This book is a measured and readable account that successfully presents a coherent reason why it is possible to embrace cosmology and belief in a 'God'. I use the term deliberately as Flew is not a Christian - he is a Deist. Some atheists who feel betrayed have portrayed this change of heart as the jibberings of an old man. Not only is this attack on his integrity a pathetic slur, it is also far from the man who I have had the pleasure of meeting fairly recently. He was far from senile. The trouble with fundmentalists - and Dawkins is a fundamentalist - is that they cannot embrace anything that contradicts their worldview. This exposes the weakness of their argument. As any philosopher will tell you, Dawkins is an able Biologist but no philosopher. This is said by many agnostic, theist and atheist philosophers. In fact, a former tutor of mine (Phd in Physics and MA in Theology and retired Professor at Oxford) will no longer share a platform with the man and many of his fundamentalist followers- so arrogant and offensive he is to anyone who dares to question his omniscience!

I recommend it to anyone who wants to read an intelligent, thoughtful and moderate response to the question "why is there anything, rather than nothing at all'. The appendix written by the Bishop of Durham is an excellent and compelling defence of Christianity.

1 out of 5 stars

Rather sick, actually. May 23, 2008
2 out of 16 found this review helpful

A wonderful ghost-written coup for unscrupulous religious zealots exploiting an old man who knew just about nothing of what was in this book. Anthony Flew had not met the people who he was supposed to have talked to and as such please do not take this book seriously. Please research the base, Machiavellian way in which this book came into existence before you start declaring it as proof of the futility and unaswered questions of atheism. Quite disgusting, even by Christian standards.

5 out of 5 stars

review of "There is a God" May 6, 2008
5 out of 7 found this review helpful

I enjoyed this book immensely. It is a very nice change to read someone having the good grace and good sense to admit to their errors, and correct them, and even more pleasant to get away from the mouth-foaming rhetoric of Dawkins et al.

4 out of 5 stars

Antony Flew's rejection of Atheism March 24, 2008
13 out of 16 found this review helpful

There have been some hysterical and ill-informed postings on various atheist blogs and websites about Antony Flew's rejection of atheism, and particularly his recent book There is a God (co-authored and edited by Roy Abraham Varghese - Harper One, 2007). Suggestions have been made that Flew is now senile and being exploited by Christians. 'Don't read this book!' shouts one atheistical blogger. Well, I have read the book, and I find it lucid and compelling. Much of it has been compiled by Varghese from Flew's published and unpublished writings and interviews, but every page has been checked and signed off by Flew himself, as he has made perfectly clear in print. I personally found some of Varghese's short editorial links a bit off for their jarring Americanisms, but they seem not to have bothered Flew. There are two appendices: one by Varghese himself and the other by Bishop Tom Wright, to whom I incidentally owe my own reconsideration of Christian claims. Both are excellent.

Two things can be added: firstly, Flew's dissatisfaction with Dawkins is long-standing. In Darwinian Evolution, published in 1984 when he was still a Vice President of the Rationalist Press Association (RPA), Flew described The Selfish Gene as a "major exercise in popular mystification", adding "Dawkins labours to discount or depreciate the main upshot of fifty or more years work in genetics" and he gives examples of this trend. In a further passage, Flew agrees with some trenchant criticisms of the book previously made by philosopher Mary Midgley (Gene Juggling, in Philosophy, October 1979 - see also her Selfish Genes and Social Darwinism in Philosophy for 1983). These paragraphs have been largely included in There is a God, showing that Flew's rejection of Dawkins's Selfish Gene hypothesis, echoed by many scientists and philosophers since it was first published, is not a new departure, but a long-standing, widely-shared and well-founded objection. They expose the fundamental flaws in Dawkins's theory, which undermine almost everything he has written since. His central dogma that "we are survival machines - robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes" removes any possibility of personal responsibility - for anything. We are simply the puppets of our genes. What a perfect excuse for all malefactors, including child rapists and murderers like Ian Brady, Ian Huntley and Roy Whiting: "It was them genes what dunnit, Guv!" An excuse, perhaps: but hardly a comfort. Dawkins was properly rebuked on Irish television when he said: "I'm not interested in freewill." How could there be any such thing in his worldview?

A second point: Barry Duke, editor of The Freethinker, has informed me by email that he has met Antony Flew (presumably some time back - he doesn't say) and he insists - without giving any reasons - "The man's an idiot". It would be interesting to know whether this opinion is based on Flew's views and writings while he was still a Vice President of the RPA, and the most prominent atheist philosopher in Britain, or whether it is a knee-jerk reaction, based on Flew's more recent rejection of the atheism which he had espoused for almost half a century. Well, I can tell you, dear readers, that I have also met Antony Flew (only once, in 1996 at an Oxford conference where we each presented a paper, and then socialised afterwards), and I have also read - over a 40 year period - practically all his published work. I can assure you that the man was not an idiot then, and neither is he an idiot now; though his memory, at 84, is admittedly not what it was. I was, incidentally, a Director of the RPA from 1989 to 1998, as well as (briefly) President of the National Secular Society (1996-97).