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Articles

Theology & Falsification: A Golden Jubilee Celebration

Can religious beliefs be disproved? If not, what does this imply? 1950 saw the first appearance of a short article which changed the way theologians look at the problem. Antony Flew describes the circumstances in which he wrote it, and we mark the anniversary by reprinting his original article.

My short paper entitled ‘Theology and Falsification’, which is reprinted below, has some claim to have been the most widely read philosophical publication of the second half of the twentieth century. It was first published in Oxford as the first item in the first issue of an ephemeral undergraduate journal called University. It was first reprinted in New Essays in Philosophical Theology edited by Alasdair MacIntyre and myself (SCM Press, 1955). Since then there have been at least forty further reprintings; including translations into German, Italian, Spanish, Danish, Welsh, Finnish and Slovak. (The qualification ‘at least’ goes in since two of the reprintings included in that further forty were made without prior permission.

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