Flew's flown

The first Dictionary of Philosophy I ever owned, as an undergrad back in the '70s, was by Antony Flew. What a strange, sad story he's become. How shamefully he's being exploited, in his senescence. Talk about a bird flying out of the light, back into darkness.

Flew argued that “God” is too vague a concept to be meaningful. For if God’s greatness entails being invisible, intangible and inscrutable, then he can’t be disproved — but nor can he be proved. Such powerful but simply stated arguments made Flew popular on the campus speaking circuit; videos from debates in the 1970s show a lanky man, his black hair professorially unkempt, vivisecting religious belief with an English public-school accent perfect for the seduction of American ears. Before the current crop of atheist crusader-authors — Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens — there was Antony Flew. 


He's not all there now.


But there is a very good new dictionary of philosophy, by Simon Blackburn. And now there's a brand-new iPod app for that. It's in my hip-pocket.


(And of course, the classic in the genre: Voltaire's.)