Antony Flew

Antony Flew (1923–2010) was an English philosopher whose writings defended atheism before he later embraced deism, citing arguments from science and philosophy.

David Hume: A Scottish philosopher whose critiques of miracles, causation, and natural theology shaped modern debates about religion. Hume’s arguments against miracles and design formed part of the skeptical tradition Flew inherited.
Logical positivism: A philosophical movement that treated empirical verification as a central test of meaningful factual claims. Its verification principle prompted Flew’s early challenge to religious statements.
Atheism: The lack of belief in gods or the belief that no gods exist. Flew’s early philosophical work defended atheism, though he later abandoned that position.
There Is a God: A 2007 book by Antony Flew and Roy Abraham Varghese presenting Flew’s case for a creator and his rejection of atheism. The book brought Flew’s later position to a wide audience and prompted debate about its authorship and emphasis.
Richard Swinburne: A British philosopher of religion who developed probabilistic arguments for the existence of God. Swinburne was among the theists whose arguments Flew engaged in debate.
Falsification principle: The view that a factual claim must rule out some possible observation to count as informative. Flew used falsifiability to ask whether religious claims exclude any possible evidence.
Deism: Belief in a creator who establishes the universe but does not intervene through revelation or miracles. This was the position Flew adopted after rejecting atheism.
Roy Abraham Varghese: An Indian-American writer on science and religion who co-authored There Is a God with Antony Flew. Varghese helped present Flew’s late arguments in the book that announced his deism.
J. L. Mackie: An Australian philosopher known for defending atheism and the argument from evil. Mackie and Flew both became prominent twentieth-century defenders of atheism.
Theology and Falsification: Antony Flew’s 1950 essay arguing that religious assertions lose content when believers make them compatible with every outcome. This essay established the challenge to religious language that defined Flew’s early reputation.

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Negative and positive atheismRelated: His proposed definition foregrounded atheism as absence of theistic belief.