What are your thought of Anthony Flew who converted not to christianity but he first publicly expressed deist views in 2004. To say he was not a highly out spoken atheist would be highly incorrect and he became famous by being an out spoken atheist philosopher, you can find a list of his works quite easily. Now this isn't proof of God but this is a person who was a high profile atheist so to say that no famous atheists convert to a religious view is slightly incorrect. This probably won't be read but just trying to show there is at least one example of a converted ex-atheist.
Deism is not Christianity. Not even close.
Christians have persecuted and murdered many deists in the past. And, ironically some Christians idolatrously worship deists too (The American "Founding Fathers" - bow your head, hand on heart when you say their names) but that's another story.
If Antony Flew was so bloody famous you'd think people would know how to spell his name, wouldn't you? I was unaware of the bloke, as was the vast majority of this world, until he became an ex-atheist.
It's a rare month that there isn't some Christian coming along to wave the sainted old duffer Antony Flew in our faces as if we are meant to know who he was before he was senile.
1 ] Antony, not Anthony
2] Who? I had never heard of the bloke until the first Christian came along waving him aloft as if he was meant to have been my life-long hero.
3] 99% of Christians hadn't heard of the bloke either.
4] Who has he brought along with him? Not many people are affected by senile old duffers.
5] He is not a Christian.
6] He's a libertarian right winger, anti-immigration, a supporter of apartheid, born in 1923. He retired as a professor of philosophy in 1983, he's been out of university life longer than me. He's not an expert in molecular biology or cosmology.
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
Thanks for your response, and the spell checker told me it was Anthony but thanks for a very quick response. Antony Flew as you rightly state isn't a Christian and i never said that he was, but you were asking for ex-atheists with a reasonably high profile, (which he did have with the intellectual community), though you may not of heard of him he did have a similar stance to Richard Dawkins for a time, the answer is no one is converted by his beliefs maybe in his old age he's just covering his bases, a bit bellow the belt to call him a senile old duffer although considering his views of which I wasn't aware of until you mentioned them I will state that he is highly old fashion conservative views which not many people would agree with. "It's a rare month that there isn't some Christian coming along to wave the sainted old duffer Antony Flew in our faces as if we are meant to know who he was before he was senile." "He's a libertarian right winger, anti-immigration, a supporter of apartheid, born in 1923. He retired as a professor of philosophy in 1983, he's been out of university life longer than me. He's not an expert in molecular biology or cosmology" Obviously I don't agree with these views, apartheid was a terrible part of our history, I'm not preaching his views if I was a Christian i would be going on about people who converted to Christianity instead i bring to the table a person who wasn't and never claimed to be. Now i would prefer if you didn't go into insulting people this doesn't help your cause, you've labeled me as a Christian which is wrong to start with, i have no belief in God but wish to increase peoples knowledge, you obviously don't wish to know of any people who have converted and shouldn't have asked. I'm sure that you will read this and again label me as an idiotic Christian just trying to back track, you seem very prejudice person to start with and I can see why theists get frustrated with some other atheists, it's better to use science as a tool to disprove religion than trying to prove that all religious people are ignorant or just idiots. If you want to discredit all people who convert then you could just look up people who have converted on a site like wikipedia and done it this way rather than asked for people to add them. I will no longer try to email to your site as I'm sure you'll be quite happy about. This will probably come under criticisms of you of which you don't read but as you criticized me it seems only right that i should respond to it. However Best wishes with your debating site. |
I have had several messages sent in about Antony Flew, he does not qualify as a famous atheist turned Christian because he hasn't turned Christian. He also wasn't so famous that I had heard of him despite me having run an atheist website for over five years before his miraculous conversion.
As for spell checking use Google to spell check proper nouns, it's very effective at getting the unusual spellings of the names of famous people.
I would apologize if I had called you a Christian. Read my message again and you will see it is as ambiguous on the matter of your belief stance as your message was. If you read an abusive tone into it that is the fault of the voice in your head. Try reading it a second time using the Oscar-announcing voice of Stephen Fry and you will notice all the poison-barbed words are actually capped with protective little corks. They were designed to injure only the guilty, not the innocent.
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org/
Antony Who?And why should I care? Antony Flew didn't make me an atheist, I had not heard of him before his conversion. I have never read any of his works or been impressed with any of his arguments with the possible exception of the no true Scotsman fallacy. Besides my challenge is to find famous atheists who have become Christians (I suppose I would also be impressed by similar converts to Islam too) not merely wishy-washy deists or theists. |
 |
Hey, you say you want to know about a Famous "real" atheist
turning from atheism. You say that you would look into the details surrounding
this event if such an event were to take place. Well make time to research
Anthony Flew. Oh, since you seem to know about the "real, famous,
atheist"....bon apetite.
Have you got a point?
Are you an atheist who became a deist? Are you Antony Flew?
Is the point that, like you, Flew is now potentially a believer in some kind of a god but thinks religions are all hopelessly in error? Or are you trying to make a point that isn't supported by the fact of Flew's change of mind?
Flew is not a famous atheist who became a Christian. He is a famous atheist (who I had never heard of) who has declared that he can no longer exclude the possibility of a creator god, but he can exclude the possibility of the god characterized by Christianity.
He is significanly less of a Christian than was Hitler.
Ok, I know this guy didn't convert to Christianity but he did denounce atheism because of Scientific evidence.
Flew, a rather old man with no scientific training, has not converted to Christianity and he is not "the atheist equivalent of Billy Graham" as many Christians who didn't know who he was either make out. I had never heard of the bloke despite being very active in atheist discussions since 1999 and an atheist since 1975. Neither has he "denounced atheism". He is no more likely to convert to Christianity from his current weak deism than Osama bin Laden is.
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org
I agree that Flew shouldn't be looked to as an authority on
the origins of life and neither do I believe that Flew will convert
to Christianity. I merely wanted to point out that what Richard
Carrier of infidels.org describes as a relatively big name atheist
(obviously not the Bill Graham of Atheism though) conversion to
weak deism. The article states, "Flew’s “name
and stature are big. Whenever you hear people talk about atheists,
Flew always comes up,” Carrier said." Thanks for responding, James Silk |
Not only hadn't I ever heard of him I have no dealings with anybody who has ever said they have.
I am agnostic as far as certain non-interventionist deistic gods are concerned. I can't know they (not several gods, several versions of hypothetical only-gods) don't exist. I do know the jealous racist psychopath Yahweh does not exist.
--
Martin Willett
http://mwillett.org
> http://www.learnthebible.org/c_s_atheist_converted.htm
<quote>
In an interview with Joan Bakewell for BBC Radio 4 in March 2005, Flew restated
his deism, with the usual provisos that his God is not the God of any of
the revealed religions:
Q And certainly in America where you've been to lecture...
A Oh America, this is a very real phenomenon - oh yes. Part of Bush's second
election success is due to this. And the unbelievers are absolutely furious,
not believing that anyone with any intelligence could be anything but a Democratic
voter.
Q What view do you take of what is happening in America - where presumably
you're being hailed now as ... one of them?
A Well, too bad (laughs). I'm not 'one of them'.
<end quote>
"I now realize that I have made a fool of myself by believing that there were no presentable theories of the development of inanimate matter up to the first living creature capable of reproduction." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_Flew Deism is nothing like Christianity and one very old academic with no history of research in the appropriate fields is not very convincing. I certainly had never heard of this "famous atheist" before his less than stunning conversion. http://mwillett.org/atheism/exatheists.htm -- Martin Willett http://mwillett.org/ Antony Flew died in April 2010, he never did convert to Christianity. |
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