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Pastimes : Discussion Thread
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From: Brumar894/22/2010 5:17:38 PM
   of 3816
 
The Late Anthony Flew's Devout Wish

According to the official NYT obituary on the recently departed Anthony Flew, while the former atheist had come around to a theistic point of view, unable to believe in atheism in light of the signs of design in the universe, he clearly rejected any notion of the Christian God. He also expressed his rejection of any afterlife: “I want to be dead when I’m dead and that’s an end to it,” he told The Sunday Times of London. “I don’t want an unending life. I don’t want anything without end.” No one asks to be born or created, of course, which is perhaps the closest thing I can think of to a wish for no afterlife; the evidence that we have for the probabilities of wishes such as this one coming true or not is rather bare, so I would have thought that Flew himself would have concluded that there is at least some probability that Flew's probable God might disallow self-willed annihilation. He was willing to admit that his atheism was a mistake, but no one can accuse him of purchasing last-minute fire insurance from Christianity. Theism was a far as he got.

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I think this shows that many people find the idea of death as an eternal sleep comforting. Two major world religions hold out eventual non-existence (and an end to the cycle of rebirth) as the ultimate to strive for. The idea of a judgmental God is a lot more frightening to many.
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