Consider this situation: World-renowned Christian evangelist Billy Graham has dropped a bombshell on the religious and not-so-religious world. He has just announced that he is no longer a Christian, and is considering becoming an atheist. Moreover, he has just penned a new book outlining his reasons why he no longer finds theism to be tenable.

The publishing world, always on the lookout for a sure-fire hit, jumped at this story. One lucky publisher got the contract, and has printed one million copies of the book. It is being distributed world-wide, with a second million copies soon expected. While it was a bad day for theists, it was a great day for the publisher in question. They have made a mint on this book, and are looking forward to the next blockbuster volume by Graham.

Now none of that above scenario happens to be true. But there is a scenario which is almost identical to it, and it does happen to be true. Several years ago one of the world's leading atheists announced that he had rejected his atheism and become a theist. Antony Flew even wrote a book about it, telling of his defection from unbelief, and outlining the reasons why the evidence seems to point clearly to theism.

His book is called There Is a God, and it was published in 2007 by HarperOne. Yet if you live in Australia, it is as if this shock resignation from the atheist camp never took place. You see, as far as I can ascertain, there are no copies of the book to be found in Australia. Why is that?

For example, as an avid book lover and collector, I am regularly in bookstores, almost on a daily basis. But even in the big chain bookstores, it is nowhere to be found. Is it at Dymocks? Nope. At Angus and Robertsons? Nope. What about the big American chain which is now in Australia: Borders? Do they carry it? Nope again.

By the way, all of these bookstores carry all the atheist authors: Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, et. al. Why not Flew? Why stock all of the anti-theists, but not an atheist who has changed his mind?

I have even checked out university bookstores. Surely it could be found there. But again, no dice. At one uni bookstore I visited, it had what it called a "Highly Recommended" section. And what was found there? As might be expected, Richard Dawkins' militant tome on atheism, The God Delusion was proudly displayed in pride of place. The store also featured the New Age mumbo jumbo, The Secret by Rhonda Byrne. But no Antony Flew.

Now I happen to have a copy of Flew's book, which I have reviewed for this site. But I had to get my copy through amazon.com in the US. Why is it not available here? Why must one go overseas to get this hugely important and significant title?

These questions need some answers. To seek for such information, I eventually called Harper in Australia after a lead from a friend. Their responses were interesting, to say the least. They claimed, after some prodding and probing, that this book probably would not generate much interest. It is an "indent title," which means it is not stocked in Australia, but must be specially ordered by a customer.

I asked why they did not carry a book which is so significant and would undoubtedly sell well, given the subject matter. I said books of a similar subject matter were well stocked in Australian stores and selling like hotcakes. So why not this one? All they could tell me was someone or some group decides what titles will come in, in bulk, and which ones will simply be a special order.

So someone or some group has decided this will not be made available to Australian readers. I was told on the phone that there did not seem to be much of a demand for the book, to which I replied: Yes, but if no one has heard of the book, it is unlikely that there will be much demand for it. A bit of advertising might help.

By preventing Australians from even seeing the book or hearing about it, they are effectively cutting demand, thus the need for supply. All in all, I was not too impressed with the reasons given.

Call me sceptical, but could it be that there are those with a worldview which is hostile to theism in general, or Christianity in particular, who are calling the shots here? Are they simply censoring out titles which they do not happen to agree with?

I guess it will be hard to determine the real answers to those questions either way. But given how the atheist titles have flooded into Australia, it seem surprising to say the least that such an important title as this, dealing with the exact same issues, should be effectively banned from our bookstores.

All I can say is it seems a bit like ideology, the battle of worldviews, and censorship to me. But I conclude on a positive note. I mentioned this title to one Australian Christian bookstore chain, Koorong. They have just brought in 40 copies from overseas. I expect they will very quickly sell out indeed, and I have recommended that they get a whole lot more in real soon.

They will end up being the sole supplier of this vital book, and reap the profits. In a battle of ideas, truth is important. Information needs to get out. If the secular bookstores and the university bookstores refuse to stock important titles like this which challenge the reigning secularism, then leave it to the smaller religious bookstores to take up the slack.

I encourage those interested in getting a copy of this most remarkable book to give Koorong a call today. (By the way, I am not employed by Koorong, in case someone is wondering. I just think that preventing certain titles from seeing the light of day is not the way to go, generally speaking. Allow the customers the right to decide what they want, instead of predetermining what they can get access to.) This book deserves a wide hearing, and is a most welcome antidote to the onslaught of Dawkins and Co.

http://www.billmuehlenberg.com/2008/02/07/our-censors-at-work/

A review of There Is a God. By Antony Flew.

HarperOne, 2007.

In 2004 the atheist world was rocked by the news of one of the most important defections from its ranks in recent times. The world's leading atheist, Antony Flew, announced that he was no longer an atheist, but a theist. This of course sent shock waves through the anti-theist camp, since they had long been claiming that rational and reasonable people only choose unbelief, whereas believers can only be regarded as stupid, gullible and deluded. It is pretty hard to describe Antony Flew in those terms.

Indeed, given his credentials, this is an amazing book about an amazing intellectual about-face. For over 50 years Flew was the number one proponent of atheism. And as a world class scholar with over 30 books on philosophy in print, he was one of the twentieth century's most imposing intellectual figures.

In this book we hear about the reasons why he has abandoned atheism and embraced its counterpart. The significance of this turnaround can be seen in part by the ugly attacks and bitter responses by fellow atheists. They have made it perfectly clear that Flew has committed the unpardonable sin here. Their crude and ugly attacks on him and his decision is a telling commentary on the intellectual shallowness, bigoted fundamentalism, and narrow-minded intolerance that characterises so much of the new atheism.

The first half of this book is a brief intellectual biography of Flew. Here we learn about how he was raised in a Christian home; his decision to embrace atheism at age 15; his career as a professional philosopher; his numerous important works on philosophy; his time as a Marxist; his encounters with such intellectual heavyweights as C.S. Lewis, A.J. Ayer, Gilbert Ryle, Wittgenstein, and others; his debates with Christian theists such as Lewis, Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne, William Lane Craig; his debates with fellow atheists such as Richard Dawkins; and his six decades as a dogmatic atheist.

The second half of the book deals with why he finally felt compelled to abandon his atheism and embrace theism. He offers three main reasons for his defection, (or apostasy, as many fellow atheists regard his move). The first bit of evidence he cites is the fact that nature obeys rational and ordered laws. The second is the fact that we are intelligently organised and purpose-driven beings. The third is the very existence of nature itself. The brute evidence of nature, in others words, has led Flew to recognise that "the universe was brought into existence by an infinite Intelligence".

He expands these three points in some detail, and demonstrates how any open-minded examination of recent scientific discoveries can only point in one direction: that matter alone is not all there is, and a supreme intelligence must be directing what we observe in nature.

All the reasons offered in this book are based on an honest assessment of the evidence. Flew had made it a life habit to follow the command of Plato attributed to Socrates, "We must follow the argument wherever it leads".

Flew rightly complains that so many atheists are simply stuck in a narrow box, where prior faith commitments to naturalism preclude an honest evaluation of the evidence. It is so easy "to let preconceived theories shape the way we view evidence," he says, "instead of letting the evidence shape our theories". Flew's willingness as an honest atheist to follow the evidence where it leads finally led him out of the barren sands of atheism into the refreshing oasis of theism.

He notes that many leading scientists today "have built a philosophically compelling vision of a rational universe that sprang from a divine mind". Eminent scientists and scientific thinkers such as Max Planck, Erwin Schrodinger, Werner Heisenberg, Paul Davies, Francis Collins, John Polkinghorne, Roger Penrose and Stephen Hawking all acknowledge that there must be more to reality than what is offered in the materialist worldview.

The various new discoveries - be they in astronomy, physics, cosmology, genetics or molecular biology - all demonstrate intelligence, purpose, order, design and complexity, the most obvious explanation of which is an intelligent designer.

Flew of course takes on all the various challenges to such thinking, be it the multiverse scenarios, the functionalism of Dennett, Stenger's notion of symmetry, or Dawkins' idea of selfish genes. Concerning the last of these, Flew had long been a critique of this idea. "Genes, of course, can be neither selfish nor unselfish," he says, "any more than they or any other nonconscious entities can engage in competition or make selections". Indeed, natural selection "does not positively produce anything. It only eliminates, or tends to eliminate, whatever is not competitive".

Even though this is a brief book of just 200 pages, the cumulative case for the inadequacies of atheism and the necessity of theism is here very nicely and compellingly made. And given the one making the case - the world's leading atheist for six decades - this book needs to be seriously read by everyone.

Flew makes it clear that he is not a Christian - at least as yet - but is basically a deist. Deism says that there is a creator God, but such a God has no ongoing relationship with the created order - a bit like an absentee landlord. He says his journey to theism was based on reason alone, not faith, and he has yet to decide about revealed religion.

He does inform us however that if he were to embrace a revelational religion, Christianity would be the best choice. Indeed, he finds the arguments for Christianity persuasive, and is now exploring the evidence for this as well. He is even impressed with the central truth claim of Christianity, the resurrection of Jesus. In fact, he allows New Testament scholar N.T. Wright to have a concluding chapter in this book, making the case for the resurrection.

So as an honest seeker, he is more than willing to consider the claims of Christ. But for the honest atheist, this book offers a persuasive case for the claims of theism. As Roy Abraham Varghese argues in another appendix to this book, "we have all the evidence we need in our immediate experience" for theism, and the only reason why people remain in atheism is a refusal to look at this evidence.

In this hugely important book Antony Flew challenges all of us - atheists especially - to honestly and sincerely examine the evidence, without preconceived biases and agendas. Genuine intellectual honesty demands that we indeed follow the evidence wherever it may lead.

http://www.billmuehlenberg.com/2007/11/21/a-review-of-there-is-a-god-by-antony-flew/