WILLIAM LEONARD ROWE AND HIS VIEWS ABOUT RELIGION.

William Leonard Rowe (July 26, 1931-August 22, 2015) was a professor of philosophy at Purdue University, located in West Lafayette, Indiana, United States. He specialized in the philosophy of religion. His work played a role in the revival of analytic philosophy of religion since 1970.
The university was founded on May 6, 1869. with the gift of $150,000 from John Purdue (October 31, 1802- September 12, 1876) with the purpose of establish a college of science and technology and mining and agriculture in his name. The university functioned as a land-grant university. Purdue was a freemason, and later supported some questionable business ventures: backing the Lafayette, Muncie and Bloomington Railroad even as lawsuits and debts climbed. Purdue also backed a silver mining in Colorado called the Purdue Gold and Silver Mining and Ore Reduction Company that failed to pay any dividends.
William became an evangelical Christian during his teenage and planned to become a minister. He became disgruntled over the firing of one professor for theological views not held by the administration at the Detroit Bible Institute. Thinking that it was too political for him, he decided to find a close major to theology, namely, philosophy. He then transferred himself to Wayne State University. From there his plan was to go to Fuller Theological Seminary as a springboard to entering ministry. He never made it. While at Wayne State University he reported that one particular professor, whose father was a minister but the professor atheist, made a deep and remarkable influence on William. After his graduation from Wayne, William began his post-graduate education at the Chicago Theological Seminary (CTS). He reported that it was at this time that he felt motivated and began to take a more critical look at the Bible, learn about its origins and met theologians who, unlike himself, did not have a fundamentalist perspective. The result was that his own fundamentalism began to wane.
William received a Master of Divinity degree from CTS, and then went to pursuit a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Michigan. He completed his doctorate in 1962 at the age of 31, taught briefly at the University of Illinois and later that year, joined the faculty of Purdue University.
William described his conversion from Christian fundamentalist to, ultimately, an atheist as a gradual process, resulting from the lack of experiences and evidence sufficient to sustain a religious life and convictions. William said that his examination of the origins of the Bible caused him to doubt in the belief of being divine in nature, and that he then began to look and pray for signs of the existence God.
William died at the age of 84. He introduced the concept of a "friendly atheist" in his classic paper on the argument from evil. A friendly atheist is a person who accepts that some theists are justified in believing in God.