Antony Flew, one of the great philosophers, argued for atheism.
Soon before his death in 2010, he brought out the book There is a
God. In it, he advocated what amounts to an argument for a designer
God. It falls short of what Christians want to believe in—but they
still hail Flew as evidence that their belief is not as silly as
many think.
In brief, they are relieved that he affirmed intelligent design. But
his God was a Deist one. Flew did not defend the friendship God of
Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. That was why, even if Flew is
Deist or atheist, he is not supporting their God at all. The core is
missing.
The work has implications for belief in such miracles as creation and others. A miracle is something that nature cannot do. So it is presumed that some God or magical being can do it.
Here is a look at what the book says.
XXI rejects Dawkins' view that nobody deserves the name of scientist if he believes in God.
I SAY, if a scientist believes that God is to be loved and obeyed
with your entire mind, then he is saying that God, not science, has
the final say. If God contradicts science, then science must be
dumped.
A scientist who says God is a plausible scientific theory which can
explain all things is mistaken—and is not being a scientist.
The whole point of saying God made all things from nothing is to use
miracle, the impossible, as an explanation! If something cannot come
from nothing, it explains nothing to say a miracle of God brought
something out of nothing. All you are doing is contradicting
yourself, for there is nothing there for it to be made of. You are
tricking people by making it look like you are giving an
explanation. It is like saying, God has made a square triangle. How
can we explain this? It is a miracle. There is no explanation for
what is a contradiction!
If creation is a miracle, so what does that mean? It means we should say we don't understand it and say no more. We need to pretend that miracles don't happen even if they do. If we believe in miracles, then what if we do a once-for-all science experiment? How do we know what we can learn from it if there is any chance a miracle interfered and ruined the results? It may be very unlikely, but if miracles happen rarely before, they could start becoming regular events—or maybe have done. Science assumes that after enough experiments have been done, the same results will come up again.
Believers in miracles have the dishonesty to assume miracles are rare. We don't know if miracles are really rare, assuming miracles happen. If people see a chair coming to life and dancing around the room, they are not likely to broadcast it. The believers in miracles complain that atheists assume miracles don't happen. They complain that some people assume they happen so often that they become mad and fanatical. So they want to avoid both extremes.
Why is it bad to assume, say, that miracles don't happen? Is it because they do? But if you assume miracles are rare, you are possibly assuming that many real miracles did not happen. So why not go a step further and agree with the atheists that all miracles are false? When the believers have to assume—to teach us—that miracles happen but rarely, why do they think atheists should not assume miracles don't happen at all? Nobody can tell anybody what they should assume, for assuming is really like guessing. The fact that they criticize atheists for assuming something they don't like shows that bigotry, haughtiness, and acceptance of miracles all go together.
It is more honest to assume, with the atheists, that miracles don't happen than to assume they occasionally happen. If you believe miracles are rare, you are picking out the miracles you want to believe or that fit your religion and discarding the rest. It is not miracles you care about but what you want to believe. The atheist position has the advantage of avoiding this dishonesty. It is wrong to state things as evidence for your faith when your wish to believe is the real reason to believe—not them.
To say a miracle happened is to say something very, very serious. It is more serious than saying somebody committed a murder—for a murder is natural, but a miracle is not natural and very, very bizarre. You should not then be assuming they happen at all. You should say you just don't know what kind of error or trickery was involved. Religion just guesses that miracles can't all be error and trickery. The believer will say a miracle occurred in situation A because the witnesses could not be misled or mistaken. This is wrong when they have no case just as convincing that they know it was a hoax, in which no evidence was left that the witnesses were mistaken or tricked. They just guess that a miracle happened, and then they expect us to believe the event was a miracle and evidence for God.
It is bad to assume miracles are common and that miracles are rare. So clearly the only alternative is to assume they never happen. You may say that it is hardly honest to assume that miracles don't happen when many of them may have happened. But then you may say that believers are dishonest for saying miracles sometimes happen when they don't happen or happen more than that. So no matter what you say, you can accuse someone of dishonesty! Anyway, as we have seen, we can't assume miracles may have happened. If you say you should assume nothing one way or the other, then you are saying that miracles may happen or may not.
David Hume did not oppose the idea of miracles but merely complained
that the evidence is insufficient. The reason is that a miracle is
so extraordinary that you need solid, hard evidence for it. This is
true.
Some say, "Nature says a bleeding statue is a contradiction.
Miracles are contradictions. You would need extreme evidence and
perfect evidence before you could justly say such a thing happened."
We do not need to go that far. Even if we think no evidence is
sufficient, we can still applaud a claim for having quality evidence
and no gap where lies or errors may have crept in that make it look
miraculous. No such claim exists.
Religion accuses Hume of assuming that evidence for miracles is
never enough or never going to be. No, he was remarking that each
case he knows of has gaps that allow for natural explanations. He
said that an excellent quality miracle report might come.
They may as well say that it is an assumption that very strong,
watertight evidence is needed to convict somebody of murder, for
murder is such a serious crime.
Believers in miracles are forced to lie that Hume is assuming there
isn't good enough evidence by their very belief in miracles that are
below standard. How decent and honest are they? If the miracles
happen, if they are nevertheless real, whatever is doing them is
unworthy of worship.
We need to ignore miracles for the sake of being able to trust the milk in the fridge to remain milk and not turn into an exact replica that is not actually milk. Belief in miracles destroys the value and the meaning of science. For Flew to start claiming that science indicates the possibility of God is to make an inexcusable and dangerous mistake. That is making science contradict itself.
Flew's Deism
Flew is a Deist, not a Theist. A Deist believes in a God who makes all things but who does not do miracles, give revelations, or answer prayer. A Theist believes in a God who does all these things. Deism is more rational than theism. Theism wishfully thinks that God loves us though he hides himself—and even that this hiding is good for us, for it requires us to serve in faith—and not knowledge. If God is love, that means it must be bad for us to know that love. That, of course, is unconvincing.
Deism tends to reject the idea of a God doing miracles, but this is weakened if they say God could do that. He has the power. And it is weakened if it takes to saying he has done one miracle—creating all out of nothing.
For Christianity Today to award Flew's book and promote it, and for Christians to be boasting that Flew agrees with them on God, is scandalous. He does not. The God of Deism is not the God of Jesus Christ. Flew does say at the end of the book that God might give revelation, for God is all-powerful. Many Deists have said and say the same, but they hold there is no convincing evidence that any religion is really based on what God has revealed. Flew has let himself be turned into a banner for a faith when he is not a proper banner at all. The Christian faith is lying and giving false impressions about him.
In short, Antony Flew’s belief in a designer God differs from the personal God of religion and rejects miracles as explanations. His work challenges both believers and atheists to carefully consider the limits of faith and evidence without misunderstanding or misusing his ideas. We remember how Jesus said that whoever is not for him is against him...