Antony Flew, a philosopher who argued that debates about God should begin with the “presumption of atheism” but then in his old age announced he had changed his mind about belief in a creator (citing scientific discoveries as the cause of his conversion to deism), died on April 8. He was 87.

Robert Short, the Presbyterian minister and theologian who is said to have initiated the study of religion through popular culture (with his 1965 best-selling book The Gospel According to Peanuts), died on July 6 in Little Rock, Arkansas. He was 76.

Rev. Stanley Jaki, a Hungarian physicist and theologian known for exploring the relationship between modern science and orthodox Christianity (and who won the Templeton Prize in 1987), died yesterday in Madrid, Spain, following a heart attack the day before. He was 84.

“Cosmically, I seem to be of two minds. The power of materialist science to explain everything—from the behavior of the galaxies to that of molecules, atoms, and their sub-microscopic components—seems to be inarguable and the principal glory of the modern mind. On the other hand, the reality of subjective sensations, desires and—may we even say—illusions, composes the basic substance of our existence, and religion alone, in its many forms, attempts to address, organize and placate these. I believe, then, that religious faith will continue to be an essential part of being human, as it has been for me,” wrote American author John Updike in his 2005 “This I Believe” essay for NPR.
Updike, who twice won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction (for his novels Rabbit Is Rich and Rabbit at Rest) and explored the relationship between science and theology in his 1986 book Roger’s Version, died of lung cancer yesterday at a hospice outside of Boston. He was 76.