Former atheist wins award

[Guest guest]

Flew wins Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth — Who said ID doesn’t pay?!

Press release issued today from Biola University:

Former Atheist Receives Award From Intelligent Design Community

29 March 2006

 

La Mirada, Calif. — British philosopher Antony Flew, once considered the

most prominent defender of atheism in the English-speaking world, will

accept the Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth on May 11 from

Biola University, a Christian university in Southern California.

 

Flew, 83, argued in books such as God and Philosophy (1966) and The

Presumption of Atheism (1984) that one should presuppose atheism until

evidence for God proves otherwise. Then, in 2004, the Oxford-educated

philosopher stunned the intellectual world by relinquishing his long-held

atheism, claiming that the natural sciences supplied evidence for the

existence of a designing intelligence. Flew said that he simply “had to go

where the evidence leads.”

 

The Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth was given to Flew for his

lifelong commitment to free and open inquiry and to standing fast against

intolerant assaults on freedom of thought and expression. Flew drew scorn

from skeptics following his shift in views. When informed that he was this

year’s award winner, he remarked, “In light of my work and publications in

this area and the criticism I’ve received for changing my position, I

appreciate receiving this award.”

 

Biola University established the Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and

Truth in 2004 to honor legal scholar and Berkeley law professor Phillip E.

Johnson, who was the award’s first recipient. The award recognizes Johnson’s

pivotal role in advancing our understanding of design in the universe by

opening up informed dissent to Darwinian and materialistic theories of

evolution. Flew is the second recipient of this award, which will be

presented on May 11 at Biola University through the university’s Masters of

Arts in Science and Religion (MASR) program.

 

Educated at Oxford following World War II, Flew frequented the weekly

meetings of Christian scholar C. S. Lewis’s Socratic Club. Unpersuaded by

Lewis’s apologetic and becoming an outspoken defender of atheism, Flew

nonetheless advocated the intellectual freedom of scholars of all stripes to

challenge reigning orthodoxies and to ask forbidden questions.

 

Flew received the Oxford University Prize in Philosophy in 1947. He was a

lecturer in philosophy at Christ Church, Oxford from 1949 to 1950, followed

by four years as a lecturer at the University of Aberdeen, and 20 years as

professor of philosophy at the University of Keele. Between 1973 and 1983 he

was professor of philosophy at the University of Reading. Upon his

retirement he took half-time posts from 1983 to 1985 at York University,

Toronto and from 1986 to 1991 at the Social Philosophy and Policy Center at

Bowling Green State University in Ohio.