Why a well known atheist changed his mind

It’s a fascinating story, and one that holds many valuable answers for those who have asked the most basic and important question: Does God exist?

The name of this respected Oxford professor was Dr. Antony Flew, who spent 50 years teaching philosophy and constructing arguments to support atheism. Prior to his death in 2010, he wrote a book in 2007 titled There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, explaining what had compelled him to admit he had been wrong. Dr. Flew mentioned early in life he came on a principle that would guide his career: Follow the evidence wherever it leads, no matter how unpopular that may be.

In his youth, Dr Flew was convinced the evidence backed an atheistic perspective. Then, from the 1980s on, with increased knowledge about the complexities and precision of the universe, the evidence started turning against atheism and toward a Creator God. Dr. Flew then reluctantly reassessed his beliefs: “I now believe that the universe was brought into existence by an infinite Intelligence … .that this universe’s intricate laws manifest what scientists have called the Mind of God…. Why do I believe this, given that I expounded and defended atheism for more than a half century? The short answer is this: this is the world picture, as I see it, that has emerged from modern science” (There Is a God, p. 88).

He offered three lines of evidence that led him to his belief in God.

How did the laws of nature come to be?

Dr. Flew wrote: “Over the last two decades, my whole framework of thought has been in a state of migration. This was a consequence of my continuing assessment of the evidence of nature. When I finally came to recognize the existence of a God, it was not a paradigm shift, because my paradigm remains, as Plato in his Republic scripted his Socrates to insist: ‘We must follow the argument wherever it leads’” (p. 89).

Dr Flew admitted the evidence dealing with the laws of nature increasingly indicated a Superior Mind was operating at a cosmic level: “The leaders of science over the last hundred years … .have built a philosophically compelling vision of a rational universe that sprang from a divine Mind…. this is the particular view of the world that I now find the soundest philosophical explanation of a multitude of phenomena encountered by scientists and laypeople alike” (p. 91).

“One of the most enigmatic aspects of the laws of nature is that these invisible forces act on matter and energy, but are not matter or energy themselves. For them to work ….they had to be in place before matter and energy existed … .To believe all these intricate laws that act in unison somehow appeared together at just the right time, with just the right force, without some organizing Intellect behind them, defies logic.” (p. 96).

How did life originate from non-life?

Flew’s second line of evidence for a belief in God has to do with the great difference that exists between life and non-life: “…biologists’ investigation of DNA has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements needed to produce life, that intelligence must have been involved…especially where this first living matter already possessed the capacity to reproduce itself genetically….there was no satisfactory naturalistic explanation for such a phenomenon” (p. 123).

Dr. Flew concluded that a self-replicating living thing being produced by chance from non-life utterly defies all odds. He pointed out: “The philosophical question that has not been answered in origin-of-life studies is this: How can a universe of mindless matter produce beings with intrinsic ends, self-replication capabilities, and ‘coded chemistry’?” (p. 124). Although there is an increasing body of knowledge about how DNA and RNA work, scientists still don’t have a clue about how all these coding systems originated, which Flew concluded points to a Superior Intelligence at work: “The only satisfactory explanation for the origin of such ‘end-directed, self-replicating’ life as we see on earth is an infinitely intelligent Mind” (pp. 131-132).

Did something come from nothing?

Flew’s third line of evidence is related to the existence of the universe. In his early years, Flew believed the universe had always existed, and there was no need for a Creator to explain it. However new scientific discoveries made him question this premise and whether something could come out of nothing: “When I first met the big-bang theory as an atheist, it seemed to me the theory made a big difference because it suggested that the universe had a beginning and that the first sentence in Genesis (‘In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth’) was related to an event in the universe… If the universe had a beginning, it became… almost inevitable, to ask what produced this beginning.” (pp. 135-137).

“Modern cosmologists seemed just as disturbed as atheists about the potential theological implications of their work. Consequently, they devised influential escape routes that sought to preserve the nontheist status quo. These routes included the idea of the multiverse, numerous universes generated by endless vacuum fluctuation events, and Stephen Hawking’s notion of a self-contained universe” (p. 137).

Flew found all these arguments to be quite unconvincing. He concluded: “The three items of evidence…in this volume…can only be explained in the light of an Intelligence that explains both its own existence and that of the world.” (p. 155). As Scripture attests: “From the beginning, creation in its magnificence enlightens us to His nature. Creation itself makes His undying power and divine identity clear, even though they are invisible; and it voids the excuses and ignorant claims of these people [who would deny Him]” (Romans 1:20, The Voice).