Thursday, March 30, 2006

Flew away to roost

Famed atheist turned wuss Antony Flew has retreated into his shell. To top it off no one seems to know why he believes in whatever it is he now believes in.

During the course of 2005, Flew cut off all correspondence and now refuses to speak to any member of the press. When Matt Donnelly, a reporter for Science and Theology News, asked him for permission to read and quote his letters to me, Flew refused, and insisted that even his phone conversations with Donnelly not be used. A friend and eyewitness whom I trust reported to me that he and another prominent secular humanist spoke to Flew in private during his recent visit to New York for the 25th Anniversary conference of the Council for Secular Humanism in October of 2005. They found him to be philosophically incoherent. He affirmed his belief in an uncaring, uninvolved, unconscious (yes, unconscious) Jeffersonian Deity, but despite half an hour of questioning as to why, he could not give any specific reason for this belief.

At 83 Antony Flew may be showing signs of senility. If he can't be coherent philosophically--and he is a philosopher--and can't give good reasons or any reason at all for his change of mind, why should we even take his "conversion" seriously?

What a way to go.... Should we cross our fingers for a deathbed reconversion?

No comments: