by Antony Flew

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Today’s atheists and Christians seem to rub each other the wrong way. Whether it’s a “new atheist” like Sam Harris or Richard Dawkins dumping on believers, or a James Dobson type identifying atheists as the source of all evils in the world, there’s sure to be someone dogmatic making a rude statement somewhere. But it wasn’t always like this. If you go back to England sixty years ago, you would have seen C. S. Lewis, the famous Narnia author and Christian apologist, rubbing elbows regularly with his colleague Antony Flew, an atheistic philosopher. Despite being as Dobson-Dawkins as you could get, meetings at Oxford University’s Socratic Club were cordial and deeply philosophical. In this atmosphere of “following the argument wherever it leads,” those with opposing views seemed to follow that path together as friends.

After following that Socratic path for decades, Anthony Flew has been rubbed the right way, at least from his own perspective. The man identified as “the world’s most notorious atheist” is now a believer in God. Not Lewis’s personal God necessarily, but still a powerful, omni-everything creator God. In his new book, There Is A God, Professor Antony Flew documents his journey from atheism to theism. Some of the book is auto-biographical, providing the typical glimpse into an author’s formative years. But most of the text is devoted to providing what Flew loves doing most: philosophizing. In this case, he waxes philosophical on God, detailing the logical steps that led him to make a slow but firm about face away from atheism.

While Flew has stopped short of endorsing Christianity, he includes as an appendix compelling content from Bishop N. T. Wright concerning the claims surrounding Jesus Christ. Although Bishop Wright’s discussion is thought-provoking, its short length makes it less influential than the more general proofs for God found in Flew’s main chapters.

If you consider yourself to be left-brained you will certainly enjoy the book, whether you believe in God or not. Flew is a trained ivy-league professor and an octogenarian, so he slips into incoherent philosophical ramblings and twenty-syllable words periodically. But most of the text is cogent, well organized, and pensive. It might not be a page-turner, but for some it will be a life-turner.

It’s this idea that God created the universe. As shocking as it may sound, not everyone believes that God even exists. And since non-existence would normally be an impediment to creative pursuits, they also deny that God created the universe.

In recent years there has been much hullabaloo about “Intelligent Design,” a collection of theories that posit an intelligent designer as the source of the life, the universe, and everything. Promoted by the Seattle-based Discovery Institute, Intelligent Design was the subject of the 2005 US District Court case “Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District,” where the Dover, Pennsylvania, school board unsuccessfully argued that Intelligent Design should be appropriate material for public school science courses.

I myself am not a supporter of Intelligent Design, leaning instead toward a theory known as Progressive Creationism. But the recent court case and its associated public debate does raise interesting questions about what constitutes science.

“Science” comes from a Latin word for “knowledge,” so why we don’t just call it “knowledge” is a mystery to me. But we call it science, and more specifically, we link science closely to those things that can be learned and tested using the scientific method or similar research activities. Science loves the physical world; if it can be touched, or experienced by the five senses, or examined through man-devised equipment, it is fodder for scientific exploration. And that’s where the controversy concerning Intelligent Design and God comes in. God cannot be touched, at least not repeatedly in the physical sense of the word. While many claim to have experienced God, the inconsistent ability to detect him through sight, sound, smell, touch, or even taste reduces the interest of the typical scientist. And just try putting God under a microscope.

Because of God’s ability to exist outside of space-time, and his seeming preference to do so, science has declared God to be unscientific. Also, any “supernatural” actions by God are laid aside where science is concerned. But is that right? If God created the universe, then he also developed the physical laws and guiding principles on which our universe—and science for that matter—is based. If there is a possibility that God might exist, and that he might have built our universe in his laboratory, should science automatically dismiss all attempts to examine his presence or participation in life or its universe-shaped holding tank?

Consider a scenario where God suddenly appears to all six billion people on earth this afternoon at 3:00pm Pacific Standard time? Using a simultaneous translation system of his own design, he declares, “No time to chat, but I just wanted to let you know that I did create the universe about 13 billion years ago using a Big Bang, and that for life I used a Progressive Creation model. Gotta scoot.”

While such a scenario is fanciful, consider what would happen if God’s creative character was, somehow, accepted as an established principle. What would that do to the sciences as we know them? How would they change, if at all? Would God’s creative acts still be considered unscientific because they lie outside the testable limits of the scientific method? Would scientists try to create models and frameworks that described the “how” of God’s creative acts?

While I do not speak for scientists worldwide, I expect that in light of God’s declaration of his creative acts, science would still call God unscientific. It’s not that they wouldn’t believe in God. They would make their decision based on the inflexibility of “science” as an area of study. God is not physical, and to expect that he could be subjected to physical scrutiny is absurd. Scientists understand this, and therefore appropriately place God outside of the scientist’s area of expertise. Despite my belief in a creative God, I still see this exclusion as perfectly valid.

It is my firm belief that God would never allow himself to be proved 100%, at least outside of the realms of heaven. If the world were given absolute proof of God’s existence, what use would we have for faith? Faith is unnecessary in a world where all elements are known and provable. But God works not only in the firm areas of knowledge and research, but in the softer areas of relationships and emotion. It is through communication and love, and not through Bunsen burners and test tubes, that God is experienced and proved. To say otherwise would be unscientific.

Specialized Bibles such as this new one from Zondervan have been available for years. Other examples include the popular Life Application Study Bible (keyed to your life), the Apologetics Study Bible (to help you debate with atheist nasties), The Reformation Study Bible (to help you debate with Catholic and Protestant nasties), Woman Thou Art Loosed Edition Holy Bible (that sounds fun), The Police Officer’s Bible (yes, it’s a real book), and the classic Oxford Study Bible (now with more Oxfords).

With all of these theme-specific Bibles, some on topics that only loosly parallel the 66 books of the Bible, why not come out with some new Bibles that really give the people what they want to read? Here are just a few samples I came up with.

• The Sin Study Bible – People, even atheists, will buy this one without even checking the content first.
• The God Who Is Hard To Understand Study Bible – It wouldn’t explain God any better, but it would sit by your side and commiserate with you.
• The Just-the-words-of-the-Bible-and-nothing-else Study Bible – Isn’t this what we used to read?
• The Juicy Parts Study Bible – No more reading 1 or 2 Chronicles!
• The Betty Crocker Study Bible – Great recipes for manna and wine-from-water.
• The Study Bible – Bible Sold Separately – Just the entertaining study texts with no actual Bible content to get in the way.

I won’t touch bologna now, that disgusting rubbery meat product. But sandwiches still intrigue me. If I have a choice between two scoops of ice cream and a chicken salad sandwich, the bread and meat will win every time. It has something to do with those moist, soft carbohydrates passing over the taste buds that does it for me.

You can tempt me with sandwiches, and I might bite. But you won’t be able to tempt me with cigarettes. Ask me to imbibe all night long on liquors or fine wines and I will easily shake my head. I’m just not tempted. Actually, it’s not that I’m not tempted; I’m not even interested.

But some people are. There are people right in my neighborhood who can’t get through the day without lighting up some tobacco or “needing” a swig of a fermented beverage to answer some inner call. They are tempted and they give in, just as I am tempted by sandwiches. But I’ve always wondered why I’m not tempted by the same things that hold others.

This really became clear one day in the late 1980s when I drove from Phoenix to Los Angeles. My car broke down on the freeway near Riverside, California. Forced to make a quick exit, I coasted to the parking lot of the Greyhound Bus station. Having made a 25-cent call to a nearby relative to come rescue me, I sauntered over to a comfy-looking blue fiberglass chair. But before I reached the seat, a boy looking all of 14-years-old approached me and asked if I wanted to buy some drugs. He looked like the type of kid you would expect to sell you drugs, and I spied his overseer in the distance.

Naturally I said “No” and walked away. But in the days following that event, I thought about the ease with which I said “No.” That boy, and thousands like him, make successful illicit drug sales in America every day, waving difficult temptations into the faces of those weak to the call of narcotics. They struggle, yet I don’t. Why is that?

Yet I am not innocent. I feel no shame in announcing to the world my sandwich addiction. But I have my own share of inner wants and desires that are not for public consumption. I am bothered by these inner turmoils and how their temptations have a regular impact on me. Sometimes the volume of temptation reaches level to where I begin to hate myself for having such thoughts.

It’s been two decades since that day in the bus terminal and I am no more skilled at resisting or giving into temptation. But I’ve finally come to terms with my own special set of temptations and why they exist. I now believe that susceptibility to certain temptations is inborn, placed their by God for a specific purpose. While temptation in general may be a test from God to cause me to depend on him, or to keep me from getting a big head, the specific temptations that plague me seem to serve a deeper purpose. I used to look at someone trapped in a cycle of addiction and pity them. But I now feel a kinship with them. I may not understand their special struggle, but I understand the hold it has on them. And I hope that they might just understand me whenever I take another bite of sandwich.