He did not believe that this "being" had any further agency in the universe, and he maintained his opposition to the vast majority of doctrinal positions adopted by the global faiths, such as belief in the after-life, or a divine being who actively cares for or loves the universe, or the resurrection of Christ, and argued for the idea of an " Aristotelian God". This is important: it is a mistake to claim that Flew embraced classical theism in any substantial form rather, he came to believe merely that an intelligent orderer of the universe existed. In some interviews, and in subsequent publications, Flew made it clear that he had not become a Christian he had moved from atheism to a form of deism. There were enticing news stories suggesting that one of the world's leading atheists had now become a Christian, and counter-claims of a philosophical abduction of an old man with dwindling intellectual capacities by Christian apologists. In recent years, Flew's fame was globalised by the news that he had changed his mind about belief in God. His books God and Philosophy (1966) and The Presumption of Atheism (1976) made the case, now followed by today's new atheists, that atheism should be the intelligent person's default position until well-established evidence to the contrary arises. Lewis's Socratic Club at Oxford, and was impressed by Lewis as a thinker but unpersuaded by his apologetics. In his hay-day, he was widely seen as the philosophical heir to Bertrand Russell as the country's leading public atheist. He loved to do battle over ideas, and his training as an analytic philosopher sharpened his natural abilities as a reasoner to a razor's edge. I saw him lecture a few times in the late 90s and he was one of the most engaging and animated speakers I've ever heard. He wrote books as often as others wrote essays he published papers as often as others wrote reviews.
Flew was remarkably productive as a scholar.
I was saddened to learn of the death, at the age of 87, of the philosopher Antony Flew, who was one of the 20th century's most significant contributors to the philosophical debate about belief in God.
0 kommentar(er)
