What a Drag it is Gettin' Old

Taken from Famous Atheist Now Believes in God:

A British philosophy professor who has been a leading champion of atheism for more than a half-century has changed his mind. He now believes in God - more or less - based on scientific evidence, and says so on a video released Thursday.

At age 81, after decades of insisting belief is a mistake, Antony Flew has concluded that some sort of intelligence or first cause must have created the universe. A super-intelligence is the only good explanation for the origin of life and the complexity of nature, Flew said in a telephone interview from England.

In one sense all this means very little to me. I'd never heard of Dr. Flew, as I've always considered atheism to be an intellectual exercise carried out in bad faith. Give me a good agnostic any day.

What I found depressing, and typical, about the story comes later on in the article,

Last week, Richard Carrier, a writer and Columbia University graduate student, posted new material based on correspondence with Flew on the atheistic www.infidels.org Web page. Carrier assured atheists that Flew accepts only a ``minimal God'' and believes in no afterlife.

Flew's ``name and stature are big. Whenever you hear people talk about atheists, Flew always comes up,'' Carrier said. Still, when it comes to Flew's reversal, ``apart from curiosity, I don't think it's like a big deal.''

The unspoken assumption seems to be that Dr. Flew, being 81 years of age, must be feeble minded or at least not what he used to be mentally. And thank God they asked a grad student to asess the potential impact of this development. You might have asked a philosophy professor, but some of them are in their 60's and 70's! (It's too bad they didn't have the time to ask a junior high student or two for their opinions.)

Like most people, I actually hope I get the chance to live a long life, but it depresses me to think that after a certain age you become largely irrelevant. Have all the thoughts worth having before you're 60. They'll be useless after that.