TOP PHILOSOPHER FLEW DENIES EXISTENCE OF AN AFTERLIFE 

Antony Flew one of the great philosophers argued for atheism and soon before his death in 2010 brought out the book There is a God in which he advocated what amounts to an argument for a designer God. It falls short of what Christians want to believe in but they still hail him as evidence that their belief is not as silly as many think. The work has implications for belief in such miracles as the creation and others. A miracle is something that nature cannot do. So it is presumed that some God or magical being can do it.

Inflewenza

Flew stated on page 2 that he does not believe in an afterlife.  He does not explain much about it but he does show that arguments for it are wanting.

It is good that Flew tries to weed out a fallacious danger in the thought of many philosophers. This thought claims that we can know nothing for sure in matters of philosophy. It claims it on the grounds that there is always somebody who won't be persuaded or convinced (page 41). They think that there is no way to know that one philosopher is right and another wrong. He reminds us that a proof is still a proof even if people don't accept it. Creating a proof is a different thing to persuading a person that the proof works.

This is very important.  Arguments for God and the afterlife are the top controversies for causing even philosophers to doubt themselves.

As God may not care about us there is no reason to think a God means there is probably an afterlife.

Page 46-47 is where Flew mentions the seeming incompatibility of the existence of evil with God. He mentions the view of Mascall that evil counting against God's goodness may not mean that God and evil are incompatible.

I object to Mascall for the evil is so serious that it does mean evil and a perfect God are incompatible. Mascall would make sense if he was thinking of a scenario where the husband's love for his wife is not diminished or to be questioned because of his small mistakes in his treatment of her. Religion and belief in God, whether they mean to or not, trivialise gross evil.

Suppose you have a suspect for a murder who really is guilty of it. Mascall would say that his good deeds will count against his guilt but will still be compatible with his being guilty.

They are not completely compatible with his guilt. In so far as the good deeds do count against his guilt they are incompatible with it. Just because he really was guilty will not prove that the good deeds did not count against it or were not compatible. There is always some doubt when we give evidence for something. What is important is that the evidence be analysed so well that the doubts will be very much diminished and made unimportant.

A man can be guilty but his good deeds can cast some doubt on his guilt. That is because he is an imperfect man. With God it is different because he is supposed to be all-perfect. A single evil that cannot be called tolerable in any sense or be said to have a purpose disproves God even if there is nothing else but good. God himself set a very high standard in the Bible when he said that a predictor of the future who is speaking for him must make no errors at all. One error entitled the people to reject the prophet for God makes no mistakes. Evils are errors - they are what should not be.

To say that evil may fit the love of God is self-eliminating for you may as well say it does not.   It is not an argument but just speech.  So you cannot say that we probably live on for you cannot say there is probably a good God to help us live on.  Besides, a God may care about his creatures but he may hold that as long as he makes a new creature when you die he is under no obligation to give you an afterlife. 

The whole way death is set up is like you are a computer that has broken down forever.  Why would God preserve your soul?  If your computer breaks you recycle it.  What physically happens is just what happens.  It does not have a soul to survive in.  God is a liar if you live on.  And if you did an all-powerful God can look after you without resurrecting your body.

Flew was a Deist and a Deist denies that God is about us.  Thus an afterlife is just wishful thinking if Deism is right.