Earlier this month (April 8th, to be exact), Antony Flew died. The best thing I’ve seen on his death is by Keith Parsons:
I rank Flew as second only to Bertrand Russell as a writer of pellucid, witty, and penetrating philosophical prose, and Flew’s treatment of the theistic arguments was far deeper and more rigorous than Russell’s. Speaking personally, his book God and Philosophy helped drive me from theological murk (e.g., Paul Tillich) and into the harsh light of analytic philosophy.
Parsons goes on to give a very nice defense of the significance of Flew’s article “Theology and Falsification.” For myself, while I was never much of a Flew fan–I’m from a later generation than Parsons, so by the time I started reading about these issues there were many other excellent people writing about them on the scene–I think his historical significance may be under-rated. It wasn’t a flashy, memorable book, but God and Philosophy may have been the first book that tried to dissect theistic arguments with the thoroughness of analytic philosophy.
Unfortunately, it’s impossible to think about Flew without thinking about the protracted fiasco of the last decade of his life, when certain Evangelical Christians tried to turn him into a tool of religious propaganda, and his death has brought with it reminders that some haven’t given up. The details of what happened aren’t entirely certain, but I’d put money on the following reconstruction of the events: a few Evangelicals, like Gary Habermas, made a concerted effort to convert Flew, and eventually (circa the year 2000) he started encountering arguments from the Intelligent Design crowd which seemed plausible to him at first glance. He made some statements saying so, then retracted those statements when the scientific flaws in those arguments were pointed out to him. Then, however, his memory started failing to the point where he started forgetting things he had previously thought or learned about various issues, so when pressed with arguments for the existence of God, he started to find them convincing.
How bad was the memory loss? In a 2005 letter to Richard Carrier (quoted in Mark Oppenheimer’s deservedly famous piece), he said:
The statement which I most regret making during the last few months was the one about Habermas’s book on the alleged resurrection of Jesus bar Joseph. I completely forgot Hume’s to my mind decisive argument against all evidence for the miraculous. A sign of physical decline.
There is plenty of other evidence of Flew’s mental decline during the last several years, but this really captures the extent of it. Promoting Hume’s argument was one of the things Flew was most known for, so that he could forget about it is mind-blowing.
In 2007, a book came out under Flew’s name declaring his belief in God, though it was quickly admitted that Flew didn’t write it, and it was in fact the product of two Evangelical writers, Roy Varghese and Bob Hostetler. Probably, Flew’s main role in the book’s creation was to look at drafts and say “I can’t see anything wrong with this,” and if he was in a state where he could endorse Habermas simply because he had forgotten about the counter-arguments, the only surprise is that the people behind the book couldn’t get him to endorse a lot more.
It’s obvious that, had Flew’s powers not declined so much, Evangelicals never would have been able to turn him into a prize for their side of the fight even if Flew had converted to deism. His views at the end of his life seem to have been more or less those of Thomas Paine, and if Flew had actually written a book on religion during that period (instead of letting his name be put on something written by Evangelicals), the result surely would have been a 21-century version of The Age of Reason, a book admired by many atheists in spite of their disagreements with it. Had Flew put out such a book, it would have clearly marked him as no friend of Christianity.
The intention behind the book was pretty obviously to say “the world’s most notorious atheist”–those are the words that appeared on the cover–”the world’s most notorious atheist accepted these arguments, so they must be good.” In the wake of Oppenheimer’s piece, though, the focus changed to “atheists suggest Flew’s mind is going, therefore atheists are evil.” But every single instance of that genre I ever saw didn’t so much as acknowledge the evidence for Flew’s mental decline. The approach was always to pretend no such evidence had been presented and/or insinuate that people like Carrier and Oppenheimer were liars (though they were never accused of lying outright, since there was no evidence for such an accusation). Among the people in on that effort was William Lane Craig, who, in spite of a career of questionable behavior, may have hit a new low that year.
A smarter Christian response might have admitted the facts of the case and focused on denying that Varghese’s actions were wrong. Had most of Varghese’s defenders taken that line, I might have a harder time still being mad about the fiasco. But the fact that nobody took this position is testament to how damning the facts were. I think Brian Flemming put it best:
Imagine that in Ronald Reagan’s twilight years — the “long goodbye” of the neurodegenerative disease Alzheimer’s — some opportunistic political hack gained access to Reagan, manipulated a few quotes out of this mentally compromised old man, then penned the book, “The Democrats Were Always Right: Why I Am No Longer A Republican by Ronald Reagan.”
Sleazy wouldn’t begin to describe this behavior.
The Reagan analogy is apt for another reason: I remember when Reagan died, there was a bit of awkwardness over the significance of the event. One editorial I read reported that at one of Reagan’s last birthday parties, the guests were unsure whether to refer to refer to him in the present or past tense. I don’t know if Flew was ever as far gone as Reagan was by the end of his life, but the feeling is similar.
Believers say atheism is powerless to comfort us in time of death. But most of the Evangelicals who called Flew a hero for renouncing atheism are committed, by their theology, to thinking thak God is roasting Flew in Hell at this very moment because he didn’t take the step of becoming a Christian.* Nonbelievers are at least saved from having to think that. It’s worth noting, here, that I’ve never seen any indication that Flew ever became so forgetful as to forget why he found the Christian conception of God horrifying. I like the way the New York Times chose to end its obituary for Flew:
“I want to be dead when I’m dead and that’s an end to it,” he told The Sunday Times of London. “I don’t want an unending life. I don’t want anything without end.”
UPDATE: Michael Shermer’s eSkeptic newsletter has an article, based in part on an interview with Flew’s widow, reporting that a year after the Varghese book, Flew was hospitalized for dementia, and that towards the end of his life, he was “rarely aware of his surroundings anymore.”
This is a good opportunity to say that human dignity is an important humanist value, and people should be allowed it even when, perhaps especially when, their faculties are in decline. Pointing out the reality of diseases like Alzheimer’s and dementia, contrary to what the propaganda vultures who circled around Flew would have you believe, is not about attacking people who have those diseases. It’s about a reality we have to face and deal with as human beings.
*In the original version of this post, I said that the Christian I linked to above believed this. In fact, he is an annihilationist.
