Anthony Flew

(this video interview is conducted by Lee Strobel and the interview below is conducted by Gary Habermas)


Anthony Flew was at one time a very outspoken Atheist. Now Anthony is a Diest, and you can read his definition of the word below.

Here Gary Habermas interviews Anthony about his conversion from Atheism to Diesm. Gary and Anthony have debated the resurrection many times and they are good freinds.
Dr. Gary R. Habermas is Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Dept. of Philosophy and Theology at LIBERTY UNIVERSITY.


HABERMAS: Once you mentioned to me that your view might be called Deism. Do you think that would be a fair designation?

FLEW: Yes, absolutely right. What Deists, such as the Mr. Jefferson who drafted the American Declaration of Independence, believed was that, while reason, mainly in the form of arguments to design, assures us that there is a God, there is no room either for any supernatural revelation of that God or for any transactions between that God and individual human beings.

Talking about intelligent design Flew responds:

FLEW: I think that the most impressive arguments for God’s existence are those that are supported by recent scientific discoveries. I’ve never been much impressed by the kalam cosmological argument, and I don’t think it has gotten any stronger recently. However, I think the argument to Intelligent Design is enormously stronger than it was when I first met it.

HABERMAS: So of the major theistic arguments, such as the cosmological, teleological, moral, and ontological, the only really impressive ones that you take to be decisive are the scientific forms of teleology?

FLEW: Absolutely. It seems to me that Richard Dawkins constantly overlooks the fact that Darwin himself, in the fourteenth chapter of The Origin of Species, pointed out that his whole argument began with a being which already possessed reproductive powers. This is the creature the evolution of which a truly comprehensive theory of evolution must give some account. Darwin himself was well aware that he had not produced such an account. It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design.

HABERMAS: If God is the First Cause, what about omniscience, or omnipotence?

FLEW: Well, the First Cause, if there was a First Cause, has very clearly produced everything that is going on. I suppose that does imply creation “in the beginning.”


While Flew does not claim to be a Christian his conversion from Atheism is one step in the the right direction. C.S. Lewis started this way as well.

I will post more about Flew later.