Antony Flew Quotes on God
Antony Flew (1923–2010) was for most of his career one of the most prominent analytic philosophers of religion in the English-speaking world, defending atheism in The Presumption of Atheism (1976), the long-running essay The Falsification Challenge (originally a contribution to the 1950 Theology and Falsification symposium), and a steady stream of more popular works. The famous parable of the invisible gardener — the believer's repeated qualifications of the claim that an unseen gardener tends an apparently abandoned plot — illustrated Flew's contention that theological claims often die a death of a thousand qualifications and so fail the falsifiability standard a meaningful empirical claim must satisfy. The late conversion to a deist position announced in There Is a God (2007), under the influence of contemporary fine-tuning arguments, marked the most discussed late-career reversal in the analytic philosophy of religion.
Quotes
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Attributed to Antony Flew:
“Belief in God must be examined, not merely inherited.”
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Attributed to Antony Flew:
“The presumption of atheism stands until evidence dislodges it.”
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“What would have to occur or to have occurred to constitute for you a disproof of the love of, or the existence of, God?”
Theology and Falsification , 1950 -
“[Still an atheist at the time] For Heaven's sake...sorry, perhaps I should have said something else.”
Craig Vs Flew, University of Wisconsin, 1st January 1998 -
“The God Delusion by the atheist writer Richard Dawkins, is remarkable in the first place for having achieved some sort of record by selling over a million copies. But what is much more remarkable than that economic achievement is that the contents – or rather lack of contents – of this book show Dawkins himself to have become what he and his fellow secularists typically believe to be an impossibility: namely, a secularist bigot. (Helpfully, my copy of The Oxford Dictionary defines a bigot as ‘an obstinate or intolerant adherent of a point of view’).”
Flew's review of The God Delusion -
“Flew's review of The God Delusion”
The God Delusion by the atheist writer Richard Dawkins, is remarkable in the first place for having achieved some sort of record by selling over a million copies. But what is much more remarkable than that economic achievement is that the contents – or rather lack of contents – of this book show Dawkins himself to have become what he and his fellow secularists typically believe to be an impossibil -
“A less important point which needs to be made in this piece is that although the index of The God Delusion notes six references to Deism it provides no definition of the word ‘deism’. This enables Dawkins in his references to Deism to suggest that Deists are a miscellany of believers in this and that. The truth, which Dawkins ought to have learned before this book went to the printers, is that Deists believe in the existence of a God but not the God of any revelation. In fact the first notable public appearance of the notion of Deism was in the American Revolution .”
Flew's review of The God Delusion -
“Flew's review of The God Delusion”
A less important point which needs to be made in this piece is that although the index of The God Delusion notes six references to Deism it provides no definition of the word ‘deism’. This enables Dawkins in his references to Deism to suggest that Deists are a miscellany of believers in this and that. The truth, which Dawkins ought to have learned before this book went to the printers, is that Dei