This book is the ‘conversion story’ of Flew, a man who spent his life leading the philosophical charge against God.

Flew begins with the story of ‘the creation of an atheist’, the success of his papers and the influence of his fresh and stinging critique of theism and theology. Along the way he admits to being wrong in a number of areas – something that struck me as a very humble thing to do. The emerging picture is one of a man who is not prepared to adjust his views when they are shown to be wrong – he identifies with Socrates’ mantra of following the evidence where-ever it leads. (There’s a lesson there for all of us.) And then Flew spends the rest of the book telling of how this mantra took him to the divine.
His ‘discovery’ hinges on four key areas of science: the laws of nature, the fine-tuning of the universe (It’s almost like it knew we were coming), the existence of life, and the existence of the universe. Notably, though, Flew doesn’t rely on any God-of-the-gaps argument (‘Science doesn’t know, so it must be God’.) Instead, he finds these four areas conceptually incompatible with materialism.
For example, he doesn’t say “Science doesn’t know what caused the Big Bang, therefore God did it.” Instead, he shows that conceptually something cannot come from nothing, so you are forced to choose between God and an alternative cause. Whatever the alternative is, it cannot be dependent on a prior cause because an infinite series of dependent causes cannot produce an effect. So you end up believing in an un-caused causer. The question then becomes, why does this thing exist – why is there something rather than nothing? Flew thinks it more likely that a God would exist uncaused than that a universe would exist uncaused.

This is something I particularly enjoyed about the book – the subjects (life, fine-tuning etc) were familiar but the treatment was new. Unfortunately this also meant that the book was deeply philosophical (I’d call it ‘philosophy informed by science’), and I had a hard time keeping up. It’s a worthwhile read even if you (like me) miss the main point a lot of the time – interesting arguments, facts and parables are scattered throughout – but sadly only someone well-read in philosophy would really get the full force of the book, I think.
But if you’re up for a challenge, I recommend it.
One unexpected highlight is Appendix B – a dialogue (to use the term loosely) between Flew and leading New-Testament scholar Bishop N. T. Wright. In it, Wright makes the case for “The Self Revelation of God in Human History”, focussing on Jesus’ deity and resurrection. The case presented, a summary of his very long book “The Resurrection of the Son of God”, was completely new to me, and very powerful. Flew agrees, saying “Bishop Wright presents by far the best case for accepting Christian belief that I have ever seen.” Now I’m keen to read that book!