In 2004 the world's foremost atheist philosopher recanted and based on science admitted that there is a divine intelligence and ordering force to the universe, to life and to our daily existence. Flew's book, 'There is a God' explains his conversion to Deism which occurred in his eighties. He wrote it to dispel the notion that near death, he embraced Descartes notion of 'hedging your bets', or was preparing his soul just in case there was an afterlife. Flew's conversion was based on a decade long reading of science, and newly fashioned scientific discoveries. Indeed so perfect is the balance of constants, forces, natural laws, and the building blocks of life itself, a long list of scientific deists populates Flew's book. Scientists converted Flew to Christianity, and there was never in his case, a spiritual explosion on the way to a modern Damascus. On page 106 for instance Flew quotes Darwin,

“Reason tells me of the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capability of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind...and I deserve to be called a Theist.”

Darwin the theist. Flew lists no fewer that 50 other prominent scientists who are theists and who defend the postulation that the perfect natural laws which do exist in our world, are not by-products of chance or some lucky event, but simply an intelligent design set into motion by a higher power that our febrile minds cannot comprehend.

The son of an English clergyman, Flew was the most influential atheist in the past 100 years. He ranked higher than Freud, Marx and Russell in his capacity to move the popular culture. His 30 plus books were the most widely read anti-Christian, anti-Deist tracts ever printed, read by over 500 million people and seeping deep into the cultural zeitgeist. Flew was the most sought after irreligious atheist in modern timers, appearing in newspaper columns, TV documentaries, hundreds of debates, and being the indispensable resource and one-man library, around atheism. He had developed an innovative style of philosophical critique of Deism and Theism which in its simplest terms was essentially a negative position, namely, 'Prove that a Deity can exist'. This is a crude simplification of what Flew offered, but it is not far from the essence of his view. Flew attacked Christianity for over 50 years using this negative metaphysical formulation which basically stated that since you can't prove that a Deity or divine essence is likely or probable, than the opposite must be true until facts prove otherwise, namely, that there is no Divine source or 'intelligent design'.

“In God and Philosophy I propounded a systematic argument for atheism. At the outset, I contended that our starting point should be the question of the consistency, applicability and legitimacy of the very concept of God. In the succeeding chapters I addressed both the arguments of natural theology and the claims of divine revelation....Drawing on David Hume and other like-minded thinkers, I argued that the design, cosmological, and moral arguments for God's existence are invalid....How is God to be identified?”

Ah David Hume. This then is the key to Flew's former atheism. If you read Flew's works, they are restatements of Hume's irreligious secularism. Yet Hume's ideas have long been discredited in the realm of metaphysics, theology and even moral ethics. Indeed much of the 'Enlightenment' was very unenlightened, irrational and just plain dumb. Secular theology or atheism, is as much of a religion as a belief in the moon deity of Arabia, Chinghis Khan's Sky God impelling the Mongols to world-domination or the Valhalla of Nazi lore. Flew's atheism is easily deconstructed simply by analysing and refuting Hume. This is true of all the great atheists many of whom were immoral characters offering up metaphysical complexity that when reduced to their basic themes were little more than gibberish including Heidegger, Wittgenstein, Nietzsche, Marx, Russell's quasi-agnosticism, and the saints of the modern eco-movement who elevate nature to replace Divine intelligence [which begs the obvious question of who or what set into motion the perfectly balanced forces of nature?.....].

Flew`s conversion was apparently induced by his study of DNA. Educated by scientists and with a big curious brain, Flew spent about a decade reading about science, new discoveries and papers on the formation of DNA. The complexity of life, the wonderful balance of constants, and the perfect formation of intelligent `code` convinced him that mere chance would never produce a thinking, rational organism.

“What I think the DNA material has done is that it has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life), that intelligence must have been involved in getting these extraordinarily diverse elements to work together. It is the enormous complexity of the number of elements and the enormous subtlety of the ways they work together. The meeting of these two parts at the right time by chance is simply minute.”

I don`t know too much about DNA-RNA and amino acid creation. But the trans-coding which flows from DNA into RNA and then into the building blocks of intelligence called amino acids is so fantastically complicated that it is an article of faith, deeper than Deism, to argue that random causes created this effect. It is impossible. Atheists and agnostics have to defend their supposition that the minutely balanced forces within carbon based organisms, along with the perfect constant relationships within natural physics all happened by chance or through coincidence. It is impossible to defend. Change hydrogen a little and you have helium which precludes the creation of water. Tweak the forces of gravity or electromagnetism just a little and you throw off the essential forces necessary for planet and life creation. How could various elements in a soupy mixture, supposedly carried by comets to the earth, turn inanimate life into rational life?

It is clear that atheism is more of a religion of irrationality than Deist belief. When you reject Deism, in marches secular Marxism, socialism, communism, fascism, Islam, eco-baloney and a whole host of spiritual-organizing theologies which are no more than dialectical political constructs parading as theistic truths. Civilisation comes crumbling down at that point. What is remarkable about Flew is that he spent 50 years and was heavily invested in a career, if not an industry, of complicated and clever philosophical reasoning against a divine intelligence. To reject his entire life of work and to embrace a counter-thesis shows a supple and active mind open to facts and rationality. Flew was the epitome of the reasoning animal. It was science and not blind faith that led him on his Socratic journey to follow `where the facts led to`.