Day 20 – from atheist to theist
Today, it seems to me, there is no good reason for an intelligent person to embrace the illusion of atheism or agnosticism, to make the same intellectual mistakes I made. I wish I had known then what I know now. –PATRICK GLYNN
If the universe needs to be eternal to make atheism plausible but science says the universe had a definite beginning, we would expect to find honest men and women who once were atheists but have changed their position in light of the evidence before them. We would expect to find men and women who are intelligent enough to see that atheism is not logical or rational in a finite universe, men and women who are brave enough to admit they were wrong about God and change their tune. We would expect to find such people, if what I have said is true, and we do.
Take, for example, Patrick Glynn. He is a Harvard-educated scientist and a former atheist. In his book, God: The Evidence, he tells us why he is now a believer:
Today, the concrete data point strongly in the direction of the God hypothesis… Those who oppose it have no testable theory to marshal… Ironically, the picture of the universe bequeathed to us by the most advanced twentieth-century science is closer in spirit to the vision presented in the Book of Genesis than anything offered by science since Copernicus.
Along with Glynn, you can now include Antony Flew as one of the most recent converts to theism. For over fifty years this British philosopher argued against the existence of God. He wrote volume after volume and participated in debate after debate giving evidence that God is not real. Aware of his reputation as “the atheist’s atheist,” I included one of his quotes as a preface to Day 18’s reading. At the time I did so, I had no idea that Flew had made a 180-degree theological turn and changed his mind about God. He made his startling announcement in a December 2004 group discussion at New York University. “It seems to me,” he boldly declared, “that the case for a God who has the characteristics of power and also intelligence is now much stronger than it ever was before.” Unable to maintain his atheism in the light of recent scientific evidence, Flew’s newly embraced theism is, according to theology and philosophy professor Gary Habermas, “testimony to the many, especially scientific figures, who are coming to God by way of intelligent design… The fact that he has become a theist is testimony to the type of evidence we have for God’s existence today.”
I could relate to you numerous other examples of ex-atheists who have made the switch to theism because it made the most sense to them scientifically and philosophically. The point I am trying to make is that such men and women do exist and that this is what you would expect if atheism proposes an eternal universe and science proposes the opposite. I am not blind to the fact that there are other men and women who have made the switch in the opposite direction, from theism to atheism, and have done so because the latter makes the most sense to them. I realize the atheist could quote them as readily as I have quoted Patrick Glynn and Antony Flew. Their switch to belief in God does not in any way prove that God exists. It does, however, drive home the fact that such belief is possible from a scientific, evidential standpoint, not just an emotional, subjective one. This, I think, is a huge step in the right direction. Far too long has the assumption been made that science and reason are exclusively the tools of the atheist.
Daily Quotations
Patrick Glynn, God: The Evidence (Roseville, Calif.: Prima Publishing, 1999), 20.
Ibid., 53-54, 26.
Quoted by Baptist Press in Baptist and Reflector [Brentwood: Tennessee Baptist Convention Executive Board, December 22, 2004], 2.
Ibid.
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