Professor Antony Flew died a week ago. His story is fascinating not because it ends in a glorious conversion to faith in Jesus (it apparently didn't, though I am not his judge) but because it debunks the idea that it is especially rational to disbelieve in God.
Though the son of a President of the Methodist Conference, no greater philosophical mind stood in the imaginary atheistic pulpit in the 20th century than Flew. None of the current crop of atheistic militants approaches his philosophical standing. And then, after a lifetime of reflection, Flew threw atheism out without a parachute.
Worse for your friendly local atheist, it can scarcely be argued that Antony Flew embraced the idea of god as a kind of pre-death insurance because a saving god was not the kind of deity that he came to postulate. His imagined god was creation's source and little else.
LESSON 1: Believing there is Someone Out There makes a whole lot more sense than being an atheist.
LESSON 2: But knowing that Someone caused you to be and squandering the chance to know him is a kind of rational irrationality.
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