There Is a God

I'm an atheist who grew up Christian, and still has a lot of important people in my life to whom faith is important to varying degrees. As such, I try to read a book now and then just to keep up with the conversation, and see if anything catches my interest or makes me think.

This book did none of those things.

Antony Flew, as it is quite clearly and repeatedly proclaimed, throughout the book and right there in the damn subtitle, was supposedly some sort of super famous atheist. I'd never heard of him, but then again I'm a 20-something so he could have just been before my time. I'd argue Bertand Russel would probably top his notoriety, but hey, snappy subtitles are what they are.

But intellectually, this book was entirely disappointing. Here's what I got out of it: Antony Flew was a philosophical atheist. He was a philosopher first and foremost, and his atheism was rooted in philosophy, which lends itself to a certain kind of argument and reasoning and headspace.

Then Antony made friends with some scientists who happened to be Christians of the Intelligent Design variety, who told him some things about DNA and complexity and probably badmouthed Darwin a bit, and Antony said "wow, DNA is pretty complicated, ID sounds good, guess I believe in a God now."

Which is very confusing, because what popped him out of his atheism had very little to do with what made him an atheist in the first place. How you can be an atheist because of philosophy and then become a theist because some scientists told you some stuff is beyond me.

But in any case, needless to say, I didn't get much out of the book and was not impressed, because ID and the things that were so persuasive to Antony seem to me to be valiant but ultimately pointless attempts to hold on to some vestige of creationism by wrapping it up in sciencey terms, that make no sense unless you're a Christian trying to fit science into your world.