# Former Atheists Who Are Now Theists: What Changed You? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [May 8, 2011, 11:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/former-atheists-who-are-now-theists-what-changed-you/581206 "2011-05-08T23:25:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/former-atheists-who-are-now-theists-what-changed-you/581206/81 "2011-05-15T15:56:42Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Aristotle wrote about ethics and what distinguishes ethical and unethical choices. However, he knew that no one can make good ethical choices dependably without a basis for doing so. Aristotle was wrong. The basics of the human ethos is biologically hardwired. You don’t need a book written by shepherds to be able to love your kids or know that murder is bad. Religion pretty much has nothing to do with ethical morality. All it does it add superstitious fears, magical ritual and attempts to establish obedience to particular authority. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/former-atheists-who-are-now-theists-what-changed-you/581206/82 "2011-05-15T17:28:45Z")
> [@suranyi](#): > > Martin Gardner wrote the “Mathematical Games” section for Scientific American for decades. Hardly an idiot. Indeed, Gardner had to be one of the _least_ ignorant people ever. (Isaac Asimov once said of him, “I think Martin knows everything.”) He was also well-known as a skeptic and a debunker of pseudoscience and the paranormal. He wrote a [substantial, fascinating book](http://www.amazon.com/Whys-Philosophical-Scrivener-Martin-Gardner/dp/0312206828/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1305480275&sr=1-1) about what he believed (about God and all sorts of other things) and why. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/former-atheists-who-are-now-theists-what-changed-you/581206/83 "2011-05-15T17:48:27Z")
Gardner wasn’t really a theist, either, but styled himself as a “fideist.” He did not believe in anything supernatural, and said there was no reason to believe in God, but felt that the mechanics of a spirtual life (faith and prayer) make for a happier life. He did not believe in an interactive “God,” as such (at best, he thought that some kind of deistic creator _might_ exist) , and stated outright that faith had no basis in reason or evidence, but kind of saw it as a way to apprehend mystery and commune with the universe. He had an idiosyncratic, abstract sort of faith, but it would be a mistake to characterize him as conventionally theistic. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 6:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/former-atheists-who-are-now-theists-what-changed-you/581206/84 "2011-05-15T18:41:49Z")
No, **Diogenes** , I think you are misrepresenting Gardner’s beliefs. He really was a theist; he did believe in God, even though his belief was not based on evidence or reason. From his book _The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener_: [QUOTE=Martin Gardner] Naturally we believe most strongly in those assertions of science that seem to us best confirmed, but belief in God can carry with it a certitude, springing from the heart, that is stronger than any belief about the world. It is easier for me to believe that any fact or law of science is no more than a momentary illusion, produced by the Great Magician and subject to change whenever the Great Magician decides to modify his Act, than to believe that the Great Magician doesn’t exist. But this certainty is not the kind we have in mathematics or science. It is trivially true that we believe what we know, or think we know. To believe what we do not know, what we hope for but cannot see—this is the very essence of faith. I am quite content to confess with Unamuno that I have no basis whatever for my belief in God other than a passionate longing that God exist and that I and others will not cease to exist. Because I believe with my heart that God upholds all things, it follows that I believe that my leap of faith, in a way beyond my comprehension, is God outside of me asking and wanting me to believe, and God within me responding. [/QUOTE] As far as God being “interactive,” in his chapter entitled “PRAYER: Why I Do Not Think It Foolish,” Gardner states his belief that God does, or at least may, hear and be influenced by petitionary prayer, while confessing ignorance as to how God does so. ---
**Author:** ![suranyi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e36b37/32.png) [@suranyi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/suranyi)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 6:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/former-atheists-who-are-now-theists-what-changed-you/581206/85 "2011-05-15T18:44:27Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > Indeed, Gardner had to be one of the _least_ ignorant people ever. (Isaac Asimov once said of him, “I think Martin knows everything.”) He was also well-known as a skeptic and a debunker of pseudoscience and the paranormal. He wrote a [substantial, fascinating book](http://www.amazon.com/Whys-Philosophical-Scrivener-Martin-Gardner/dp/0312206828/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1305480275&sr=1-1) about what he believed (about God and all sorts of other things) and why. And note that Isaac Asimov was one of the most outspoken atheists ever. Thus showing that atheists and deists do not have to be intellectual enemies. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/former-atheists-who-are-now-theists-what-changed-you/581206/86 "2011-05-15T18:49:23Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > No, **Diogenes** , I think you are misrepresenting Gardner’s beliefs. He really was a theist; he did believe in God, even though his belief was not based on evidence or reason. From his book _The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener_: > > As far as God being “interactive,” in his chapter entitled “PRAYER: Why I Do Not Think It Foolish,” Gardner states his belief that God does, or at least may, hear and be influenced by petitionary prayer, while confessing ignorance as to how God does so. He was not using the word “God” in a theistic sense. He was, at best, a deist. He also admitted that he had no basis whatsoever to believe in God. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/former-atheists-who-are-now-theists-what-changed-you/581206/87 "2011-05-15T19:06:19Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > He was not using the word “God” in a theistic sense. He was, at best, a deist. This is why people find you so frustrating to debate or discuss things with. “I myself am a theist” -Martin Gardner, _The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener_, p. 18 But of course you know better than Gardner himself what he believed. ---
**Author:** ![Calculon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b5a626/32.png) [@Calculon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Calculon)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 9:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/former-atheists-who-are-now-theists-what-changed-you/581206/88 "2011-05-15T21:42:10Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > Aristotle was wrong. The basics of the human ethos is biologically hardwired. You don’t need a book written by shepherds to be able to love your kids or know that murder is bad. Religion pretty much has nothing to do with ethical morality. All it does it add superstitious fears, magical ritual and attempts to establish obedience to particular authority. I think this is an impossibly vague view of morality. It it I think self evidently true that humans do not act ethically all the time. There are people that even mistreat their children and kill people. Therefore I really wonder in what sense is morality “hardwired” into people. If that really were true, then people would act morally all the time, and morality would really just be reduced to the things that people do. If something is “hardwired”, then it cannot be acted against or over-ridden. Worse still is that there are large disagreements between people as to what morality actually is. It gets even worse when you consider different societies across history. There is no one singular view of morality that is dominant everywhere. For instance while you claim that it is somehow universal for people to love their children, the people of ancient Sparta would beg to differ. You say that murder is universally recognised as wrong, but the cannibal tribes in Papua New Guinea would disagree. This universalist morality that you speak of is simply a fantasy. In cases where you have diagreements over morality, your view of it being “hardwired” does not help to distinguish which view is the truly moral. I think as a moral epistemology, it is simply a failure because you have to say that any truly felt moral conviction is just as valid as any other, even when they are contradictory. Your theory also confuses moral ontology with moral epistemology. Even if it is true that morality is hardwired into us (and I think it is not), it still only explains how we know what is and is not moral. It does not explain the basis of morality or why these things are moral (moral ontology). The real question that religion helps to answer is one of moral ontology. I don’t think atheism really has any good explaination of moral ontology. Evolution is not an explaination of moral ontology. Darwinian evolution selects for survivability, not moral correctness. In the animal kingdom there are all sorts of behaviours that, if they were committed by humans, we would deem immoral. I think it is an abuse of evolution to suggest that it either reveals true morality, or worse still creates it. Calculon. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/former-atheists-who-are-now-theists-what-changed-you/581206/89 "2011-05-15T22:41:28Z")
There is no such thing as objective morality. There is no “moral entology.” Humans are evolved as a social species and are wired to have certain kinds of chemical, emotional responses to certains kinds of stimuli. The empathic response is biological, and universal. That doesn’t mean that all individuals have it, there pathological individuals in who it is stunted or absent, just like there are individuals who can’t see or hear. The question of how to “know” what is moral doesn’t mean anything, since morality is just a descriptor for emotional responses and is largely subjective. You might as well ask how it’s possible to “know” what smells good. Like Hamlet said, “nothing is either good nor bad but thinking makes it so.” ---
**Author:** ![Calculon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b5a626/32.png) [@Calculon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Calculon)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/former-atheists-who-are-now-theists-what-changed-you/581206/90 "2011-05-15T23:37:05Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > There is no such thing as objective morality. There is no “moral entology.” Humans are evolved as a social species and are wired to have certain kinds of chemical, emotional responses to certains kinds of stimuli. The empathic response is biological, and universal. That doesn’t mean that all individuals have it, there pathological individuals in who it is stunted or absent, just like there are individuals who can’t see or hear. > > The question of how to “know” what is moral doesn’t mean anything, since morality is just a descriptor for emotional responses and is largely subjective. You might as well ask how it’s possible to “know” what smells good. Like Hamlet said, “nothing is either good nor bad but thinking makes it so.” So then how do you express outrage at what you perceive to be immoral things? If morality has no real objective meaning then on what basis would you describe an action as “wrong”? For instance would you say that the view that the 9/11 terrorists were doing evil is subjective and just as valid as the view that they were doing good things? Many atheists talk of the immorality of religion as though it is somehow an objective feature of it. On your view are they all simply mistaken and speaking nonsense? Also, if morality is meaningless, what then is “ethics” in your view, and does that have any objective meaning? Calculon. ---
**Author:** ![Trepa\_Mayfield](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/edb3f5/32.png) [@Trepa\_Mayfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trepa_Mayfield)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/former-atheists-who-are-now-theists-what-changed-you/581206/91 "2011-05-15T23:46:44Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > **pedescribe** has asked me to explain what the difference is between ‘ethical vs. unethical’ and ‘sin vs. virtue’. I think the answer is implicit in this debate we’re having. ‘Ethical’ and ‘unethical’ are words for evaluating actions according to their effects. ‘Sin’ and ‘virtue’, by contrast, don’t apply only to actions, but also provide ways of evaluating people. In other words, when I think about what sort of person I wish to become, thinking about resisting sin and installing virtue gives me a much broader basis to plan on than thinking about whether some particular action is ethical or unethical. While the word “sin” is mostly used in religious contexts, the concept that we need a way to evaluate the sort of person we are is not exclusive to religion. But–and once again, I note that our argument is based primarily in personal experience–I have observed atheists many many times call people “immoral”, “good”, “evil”, “ethical”, etc. It doesn’t seem to me that atheists have trouble making moral judgements of people. > [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle all agreed that there was a moral imperative to suppress bodily desires such as hunger and sex and replace them with a focus on higher goals such as wisdom. They needed no religious basis for doing so. Today, however, a typical student getting a secular education reads little, if any, of those three. Okay, so you acknowledge that people can act according to a moral code without using a religious framework. Do you think that Socrates, Plato and Aristotle had to work harder for that same level of moral focus than a religious person with such a moral code? > [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Aristotle wrote about ethics and what distinguishes ethical and unethical choices. However, he knew that no one can make good ethical choices dependably without a basis for doing so. Consequently he taught that we must cultivate in our own selves a higher nature. Once we do that, correct choices will flow from us naturally and dependably. This is a very practical approach based on knowledge of human nature. Humans don’t make ethical choices most of the time; instead we just go on autopilot. So, if I understand what you are saying, people tend to do the same things over again, moral or immoral. So Aristotle suggests that humans ought to make the moral decisions the first time, after which they will do them again and again, according to the human tendency. > [@ITR\_champion](#): > > A man who uses pornography will probably use it thousands of times in his life. He’s not going to stop and consider the ethical side each time he does so. Or, similarly, a person who goes shopping doesn’t evaluate whether each purchase is good for the human race in terms the economic system that made the product and its justice or lack thereof; he or she just buys without thinking about it. Well, then, why does it matter? According to your (Aristotle’s?) argument above, we need only judge each decision once, after which we simply repeat. The man looking at pornography you use as example may have evaluated it, deemed it perfectly moral according to his moral code, and not bothered to re-evaluate. That would make him as devoted to morality as a religious man who never uses pornography. Similarly, an atheist vegan who always buys the same food has made her moral judgments long ago, and is simply following the Aristotelian way. She is trying just as hard to be moral, I argue, as the religious woman who confesses to a priest every week out of habit. P.S. I am enjoying this discussion, ITR champion. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [May 15, 2011, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/former-atheists-who-are-now-theists-what-changed-you/581206/92 "2011-05-15T23:56:44Z")
> [@Calculon](#): > > So then how do you express outrage at what you perceive to be immoral things? If morality has no real objective meaning then on what basis would you describe an action as “wrong”? It’s an involuntary emotional response. I can know that nothing really smells “good or bad” objectively, but that doesn’t mean I’m not still wired to be repulsed by the smell of shit, and humans are wired to feel emotional distress at seeing harm done to those we have have chemically bonded with, or who we perceive as belonging to our in-group. Humans are evolved to survive in groups not as individuals, and we are programmed to feel protective and empathic towards our own groups. Did anyone have to tell you to feel distress at seeing people suffer, or did you just feel it? > [@](#): > > Also, if morality is meaningless, what then is “ethics” in your view, and does that have any objective meaning? Objective meaning, no, but subjectively, I see “ethics” as the attempt to live my life in such a way as to do the least harm to others while sustaining some kind of base level fulfilment of living for myself. ---
**Author:** ![Calculon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b5a626/32.png) [@Calculon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Calculon)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/former-atheists-who-are-now-theists-what-changed-you/581206/93 "2011-05-16T00:11:05Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > It’s an involuntary emotional response. I can know that nothing really smells “good or bad” objectively, but that doesn’t mean I’m not still wired to be repulsed by the smell of shit, and humans are wired to feel emotional distress at seeing harm done to those we have have chemically bonded with, or who we perceive as belonging to our in-group. Humans are evolved to survive in groups not as individuals, and we are programmed to feel protective and empathic towards our own groups. Did anyone have to tell you to feel distress at seeing people suffer, or did you just feel it? > > Objective meaning, no, but subjectively, I see “ethics” as the attempt to live my life in such a way as to do the least harm to others while sustaining some kind of base level fulfilment of living for myself. So if there is no objective morality/ethics would you say that an Islamic terrorist is just as moral/ethical as an atheist so long as each really feels that they are doing the right thing? Is anything justifiable so long as you feel that it is right? Calculon. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 12:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/former-atheists-who-are-now-theists-what-changed-you/581206/94 "2011-05-16T00:17:14Z")
> [@Calculon](#): > > So if there is no objective morality/ethics would you say that an Islamic terrorist is just as moral/ethical as an atheist so long as each really feels that they are doing the right thing? Is anything justifiable so long as you feel that it is right? If someone else thinks that shit smells good, does that mean that it doesn’t smell bad to you? No, if I think something is unethical, then it’s unethical and that’s the end of it. I am the one and only decider of what is ethically right or wrong, just like I’m the only decider of what kind of movies and music I like. Morality is an aesthetic. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/former-atheists-who-are-now-theists-what-changed-you/581206/95 "2011-05-16T02:12:19Z")
ENOUGH with the “morality” argument. Feel free to open a new thread on the topic, but it is off topic for this thread. [/Moderating] ---
**Author:** ![Paranoid\_Randroid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/paranoid_randroid/32/18_2.png) [@Paranoid\_Randroid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paranoid_Randroid)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/former-atheists-who-are-now-theists-what-changed-you/581206/96 "2011-05-16T14:21:57Z")
Gardner, spoken about above, fascinates me as an example of emotion-over-reason with respect to religious conversion. His views are perhaps unconventional (although not as much as one might think), but it’s wrong to deny his theism: in The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener he quite specifically calls himself a theist over and over again. It should be noted that fideism is not contradictory to theism; it simply means “faith alone”. Here is what Gardner says about prayer in Chapter 14 (“PRAYER: Why I Do Not Think It Foolish”). > [@](#): > > As for empirical tests of the power of God to answer prayer, I am among those theists who, in the spirit of Jesus’ remark that only the faithless look for signs, consider such tests both futile and blasphemous. It is the essence of fideism that God chooses not to reveal himself in either a rational or an empirical way. A great many protestants with some philosophical sophistication could have written the same thing, and I daresay many such persons probably use the exact term “fideist”. He does go on to call himself “a theist outside all traditional religions”, but that isn’t the same thing as being a deist. In fact, he clearly _isn’t_ a deist, because he believes in the efficacy of prayer (he simply doesn’t believe that it can be demonstrated or has a rational basis at all). I find all his views on religion rather … silly at best, revoltingly irrational at worst. But there you go. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 8:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/former-atheists-who-are-now-theists-what-changed-you/581206/97 "2011-05-16T20:09:23Z")
> [@pedescribe](#): > > But–and once again, I note that our argument is based primarily in personal experience–I have observed atheists many many times call people “immoral”, “good”, “evil”, “ethical”, etc. It doesn’t seem to me that atheists have trouble making moral judgements of people. Let me put it this way. If I read a paper, or listen to radio talk show, or read a blog, or watch a cable news show, I’ll expect to see a and hear a lot of judgements. I’ll hear the author (or host, blogger, etc…) offering a lot of condemnation of various people and praise of other people, though generally the condemnations will heavily outweigh the praises. But I don’t think that most of the discourse today consists of moral judgements. Most often if person A disagrees with person B, A will accuse B of being either stupid or insane. Such charges are not moral statements, but rather an attempt to dismiss B without tackling their argument. Actual mentions of moral issues are rare. To take on example, look at the response to the financial crisis. There’s been a lot written about the details of what went wrong on Wall Street, which companies did what and what particular date and so forth. But how many of the articles in major publications go beyond asking what events took place and start asking what motivations are driving the people involved. I think it’s reasonable to assert that the root of the problem is a colossal case of greed. Executives at the top want money beyond all measure and various other players in the business world are also swayed by desire for money far beyond their needs. But how many articles or TV broadcasts actually mention greed beyond occasionally tossing it as one insult among many? How many seriously discuss whether the main motivations of people in our society should change? If a man goes through business school then internships, then rises up the corporate ladder to become CEO, how often in that process will he have to go through a serious discussion of the difference between sin and virtue? How often will he have to defend the ethics of acquiring bushels of money? Similarly, how often do you see anyone these days talking seriously about gluttony? It seems like a relevant topic; after all we’re having an “obesity epidemic”. (Actually an obesity pandemic.) Yet in all the blather that’s resulted I see few mentions of the desire for food and how we should view that desire. The discussion is about which diets work best, which supplements work, what government policies can help, and so on. In other words, everyone talks about how we can work around a person’s nature, not what a person’s nature should be. (Not surprisingly obesity continues to rise.) Instead, the dominant theme of the secular, western societies these days is indulgence, which is so omnipresent that many people don’t notice it, in a ‘fish have no word for water’ way. Advertising tells us that as soon as we desire something, we deserve it. The self esteem movement says that kids should be praised no matter what they do or how well they do it. Likewise the dominant mood on college campuses like mine was for indulging the wants of any students group that existed, rather than engaging a debate about whether those wants are legitimate. That’s what I’m getting at in saying that the sphere of morality in the secular world is smaller. Nor is it at all difficult to find consequences of this. I’ve seen many people recently noting that all of those responsible for the financial crisis have escaped punishment and will probably continue to do so. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/former-atheists-who-are-now-theists-what-changed-you/581206/98 "2011-05-16T22:06:48Z")
**ITR Champion** , take the morality discussion to a different thread. ---
**Author:** ![Calculon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b5a626/32.png) [@Calculon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Calculon)\ **Post date:** [May 16, 2011, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/former-atheists-who-are-now-theists-what-changed-you/581206/99 "2011-05-16T22:44:47Z")
To bring the morality discussion back to the OP, I think that for some theists it is an important influence in people choosing to become theists. Diogenes view that morality is really at heart only an aesthetic and lacks any objective meaning is I think the only consistent, logical moral conclusion to make based on atheism. However I think that this makes atheism if not untrue belief then at least an unliveable one. By this I mean that hardly anyone talks of morality in an aesthetic way. People refer to morality as having some sort of objective meaning. However if atheism is actually true then all of this talk is meaningless. In an atheistic worldview you can’t really talk of say, the evils of Islamist terrorism or whatever. You can talk about how you find those actions distasteful. But you could also talk about how you find Brittany Spears music distasteful in the same sense. You cannot express whether something is right or wrong, good or bad, just whether you personally like it or not. It was certainly a big influence on me in rejecting atheism. I just dont think I could practically live knowing that consepts like morality, ethics, fairness, justice, ect were all meaningless. I suspect that a lot of atheists feel the same which is why you so often see them talking of morality in objective terms. Calculon. ---
**Author:** ![Naxos](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/50afbb/32.png) [@Naxos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Naxos)\ **Post date:** [May 17, 2011, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/former-atheists-who-are-now-theists-what-changed-you/581206/100 "2011-05-17T03:11:21Z")
> [@suranyi](#): > > Martin Gardner wrote the “Mathematical Games” section for Scientific American for decades. Hardly an idiot. You’re right. However, if he can’t acknowledge his need for emotional gratification for claiming that a supernatural entity is controlling his fate, then he’s worse than what I called him. I watched an English particle physicists in a documentary recently (names withheld to protect the innocent) who said nothing in physics precludes the existence of a “creator”. People’s personal needs are not relevant to reality. That’s why I said Gardner is an idiot - he seems to be dismissing this simple fact. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/former-atheists-who-are-now-theists-what-changed-you/581206.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/former-atheists-who-are-now-theists-what-changed-you/581206.md?page=6)