Antony Garrard Newton Flew (11 February 1923 – 8 April 2010)
was a British philosopher. Belonging to the analytic

Analytic philosophy

Analytic philosophy is a generic term for a style of philosophy that came to dominate English-speaking countries in the 20th century...

 and evidentialist

Evidentialism

Evidentialism is a theory of justification according to which the justification of a belief depends solely on the evidence for it. Technically, though belief is typically the primary object of concern, evidentialism can be applied to doxastic attitudes generally...

 schools of thought, he was notable for his works on the philosophy of religion

Philosophy of religion

Philosophy of religion is a branch of philosophy concerned with questions regarding religion, including the nature and existence of God, the examination of religious experience, analysis of religious language and texts, and the relationship of religion and science...

.

Flew was a strong advocate of atheism

Atheism

Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...

, arguing that one should presuppose atheism until empirical evidence of a God surfaces. He also criticised the idea of life after death

Afterlife

The afterlife is the belief that a part of, or essence of, or soul of an individual, which carries with it and confers personal identity, survives the death of the body of this world and this lifetime, by natural or supernatural means, in contrast to the belief in eternal...

, the free will

Free will

"To make my own decisions whether I am successful or not due to uncontrollable forces" -Troy MorrisonA pragmatic definition of free willFree will is the ability of agents to make choices free from certain kinds of constraints. The existence of free will and its exact nature and definition have long...

 defence to the problem of evil

Problem of evil

In the philosophy of religion, the problem of evil is the question of how to explain evil if there exists a deity that is omnibenevolent, omnipotent, and omniscient . Some philosophers have claimed that the existences of such a god and of evil are logically incompatible or unlikely...

, and the meaningfulness of the concept of God.