Former Atheists Who Are Now Theists: What Changed You?

Great Debates
41

Basically you’re imagining a difference and then trying to use that as evidence. Have you ever in your life attended a college lecture? I’ve never heard a single one advocating legislation or activism. You seem to have a Jack Chick impression of college.

“Sin” is a purely religious concept, so it’s circular to say that people who believe in it are religious.
Fundamentally, though, human morality is simply a function of being evolved as a social species. There’s nothing magic about it, and humans (with a minority of pathological individual exceptions) all have the basics for “moral” behavior bulit into their hardware. There’s not a single ethical value in Christianity that didn’t already exist when we were swinging in trees.

Of course, religion does also contain a lot of archaic ideas about ritual and sexual purity, but those are not ethical values just superstitious ones.

42

How can you argue that ideas about sexual purity are not ethical values? They may not be universal (or even widely accepted) – even if they were rooted in “superstition”, they are still ethical values held by fairly large populations of people.

“Sex is wrong outside of marriage” is a value statement about ethics, whether you agree with it or not.

43

What does jerking off or consensual sex have to do with ethics?

ETA there are certainly ethical issues which come into play with sex, but consensual sex, in itself, is ethically neutral. There are some aspects of sexual codes in religion that have no ethical application at all, and are just superstitious (i.e. proscriptions against masturbation, or pre-marital sex or homosexual sex).

44

For many people, nothing; for others, quite a bit. That’s directly related to ITR champion’s point I think.

Just one example - many religious people considier it unethical to have sex before marriage because not only are you helping your partner commit an immoral act; you’re also doing wrong to your partner’s future spouse.

You can scoff at this moral framework but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

45

If you were to attend a college lecture on political action, sure. If you were to attend a college lecture on ethical behavior or a philosophy seminar it would be different. And you are right that the terms “sin” and “virtue” are more likely to come from a religious person because they are largely religious ideas about the **basis **of morality. A secularist speaking about morality about morality would be more likely to talk of the common good, reduction of misery, utility, or other non-religious basis of morality.

To try and stem this detour a little, I think what you are trying to convey is that part of your journey to religion was dissatisfaction with the moral framework you had been taught in a secular upbringing and that your perceived in some secularists. No one can argue with that without living your life, but we can disagree with the broader implication that a secular morality **must **be inferior in scope and depth to a religious one. If you did not intend that meaning, then chalk it up to over sensitivity brought on by being told that explicitly on more than one occasion.

46

I’m saying it’s not based on any objective, real world ethical concerns, but only on superstitious beliefs about purity. Saying it’s unethical because it’s immoral is circular.

47

No it isn’t.

Regards,
Shodan

48

So…if only everyone were Christians, they’d have an agreed upon morality, and therefore disagreements could be resolved?

Seriously?

I guess from your background atheism is essentially identical with left wing activist academia. And when you found out that the left-wing activist academic background you grew up with was stupid, you figured that proved God was real. What would you say to someone who grew up around reactionary religious bigots, and therefore determined that there was no such thing as God? Let’s just say that my experiences at college, since I didn’t go to a left-wing liberal arts college in Southern California, were a bit different than yours.

The existence or non-existence of God is not determined by the sort of people who believe or disbelieve in God. God isn’t real because nice people believe in him and assholes disbelieve, nor is God false because assholes believe in him and nice people don’t.

49

So here’s what I don’t get: what’s the difference between sin vs. virtue and unethical vs. ethical? Atheists–most atheists–fret about what is ethical all the time. And the way I see it, those are just two different terms for the same things–moral judgement.

50

I hold a degree from a large major public university (degree in mathematics, minors in computer science and philosophy), and I’m currently about a year away (hopefully!) from a PhD in economics. Although it’s true that I never took upper-level courses in the softer social sciences, I guarantee you that I never heard any professor ever make calls to activism or advocating legislation. The closest I came to the latter was in a sparsely-attended upper-level ethics class, in which the professor made it very clear that she believed that abortion should be legalized. But that was apropos to the discussion at hand and hardly a good example of advocacy.

51

But that wasn’t at issue. You stated that ideas about sexual purity are not ethical values; but strictly speaking they are in the sense that they are values which arise from some (possibly ad hoc, superstitious, ultimately incorrect) ethical system. The statement that masturbation is an ethically neutral act does not contradict the status of “masturbation is wrong” as an ethical value.

You say that proscriptions against masturbation have no ethical application. But I’m not necessarily even sure what that means; within some framework holding masturbation to be wrong, proscriptions against masturbation have clear ethical application. That such systems are wrong does not change this.

52

I think if you read my first post carefully, you’ll see that’s not what I was saying at all. I said that I was brought up in a left-wing, anti-religious household, and during college and grad school I came to see that the worldview I was brought up with wasn’t tenable. That much is true. I did not say that I converted *just because *the worldview I was brought up with wasn’t tenable. Rather, once I began questioning the things I was taught as a child, I opened my mind enough to seriouls investigate other ideas and the read and listen to people with other worldviews. After several years of free-roaming investigation I came to the conclusion that the Christian worldview made the most sense.

That said, I should mention the point that Chesterton made in The Paradoxes of Christianity, which is that there’s something funny about the way that the anti-Christian thinkers attack Christianity. When I was young I was frequently being told that it was trivially easy to prove that Christianity was untrue. It supposedly couldn’t stand up to scrutiny any better than astrology or seances, and was no more defensible than Scientology or any other piece of made-up crap. But then, for some reason, they went after Christianity with a great deal more savagery than anything else. So logically it seems that these people don’t actually believe Christianity to be in the same class as other religions. Perhaps they believe that Christianity is so evil that it must be attacked with every possible argument. Perhaps they believe that Christianity is so good that people will choose it unless special effort is spent disuading them. But it was obvious that they did not believe that Christianity was just one among many religions, one exactly akin to the rest.

53

You don’t think it’s because over 90% of Americans are Christians, rather than Jews or Muslims or Hindus or Pagans?

Christianity occupies a special place in American and European thought for reasons that should be obvious. You aren’t going to put much effort into debunking the worship of Thor because Thor isn’t worshiped by 300 million of your fellow countrymen, if you gathered all the worshipers of Thor together they could meet comfortably in the banquet room of a random Dennys. Rather you spend your time critiquing atheism and agnosticism and deism and apathism, because while all those lumped together are a pretty small minority, there’s still millions of them.

54

Note that I’m hijacking this thread. If we want to argue about atheism vs christianity again we can do that elsewhere.

55

Perhaps another voice will put this thread back on its original track. :slight_smile: I have journeyed from atheism to what most of this board would consider conservative Christianity. I call myself a Christ-follower.

I was raised in an anti-Christian home. Diogenes is not even in the same league as my parents in terms of cynicism and disregard for Christian beliefs. Quite naturally, as I grew up I just knew there was no god—or at least not one who gave a rat’s behind about people. We were an accident in an accidental, meaningless universe.

Curiously, although I knew that god didn’t exist, I was still incredibly angry with God. For not existing. For making this world such an awful mess. For things being unfair. For the @$#%@ mess that was my life.

My radical belief shift occurred not by rational logic or argument, and certainly not by deep thoughts. On the contrary, it happened one night when I screamed out at the universe, at God, in anguish over my life, over all the unfairness and cruelty. I defied the universe to make sense. God if you are real, make it somehow make sense. How dare you not exist? How dare you?

Perhaps you are familiar with the scripture that says we will find God if we seek him with all our hearts? God honors that promise even for those who don’t believe he exists. That night as I was hurling accusations and abuse at him, he saw that I was actually seeking him, and he chose to be found. By me!

In humility and love, he spoke into my darkness, he shone light into my life, he poured out his loving spirit upon me, in a vision as real as life itself. “Dear one, no matter what you have done, I will always love you. Come, taste and see.” No offer to make it make sense, no pretense that the world was “just fine”—but the incredible affirmation that I mattered and he knew me and wanted me to know him.

At this point, I was certain that I would have to deny all my intellect, every scientific truth, and become a total fool, but I DID NOT CARE. I was willing at that point to agree that 2+2=5 for the sheer joy.

Over the following decades, I have studied theology and learned that there is, indeed, an intellectual basis for my faith. I have learned that my faith is shared by many of the great scientists who were my heroes as a child. Authors such as Chesterton, Lewis, Bonheoffer and Augustine have provided me with strong logical and intellectual underpinnings. And I now know that the best way to affirm that 2+2=4 is through the faith that declares “In the beginning God created…”

But I didn’t start that way. I started with being overwhelmed by the love of God. Only after my heart was won did my brain come kicking and screaming after.

56

YES. I tried with my brain first, and it didn’t work. My heart (spirit?) was won. I suspect I may be in the “brain kicking and screaming” part for my whole life, though.

57

I participated in the earlier discussion as a theist-turned-atheist. Nevertheless I may not be too out of place in this thread, because – although for all practical purposes an atheist – I believe that there is something to classical theism. By this I mean that traditional philosophical arguments for the existence of god haven’t in my view been given a fair shake. They show something, even if that something is not a personal god who is all-loving (in a sense univocal to what we mean by parental love).

In other words, I’m either a Thomist or a fellow traveler to Thomism. But I’ll be straight about it: the Abrahamic god seems to me quite absurd. Nothing in the traditional arguments gets us anywhere close; and the most bizarre (but fascinating!) thing about the theological contortions of classical theists is how they ingeniously twist meanings around to apply adjectives to the impersonal thing that their arguments demonstrate. All analogically, of course, a fact conveniently forgotten when they all go to pray.

(For instance, how is god loving? He is loving because he sustains everything in existence. Making things exist … that’s kind of like loving, right? Right? I recommend that anyone intrested in how this works read The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil by Fr. Brian Davies. A great book, don’t get me wrong, but if one looked honestly at the god whose attributes Davies develops, it would be a god far removed from He imagined by rank and file Christians).

I bring all of this up not so much because my own story is interesting to the OP’s question, but because – after reading the last few responses – I am struck by how genuine conversions almost always seem to require some emotional leap. I tried to investigate catholicism after my philosophical turnaround, and I just couldn’t force myself to believe it. None of it made sense.

It seems much easier to become emotionally convinced and recruit the brain later on.

58

I find I constantly have questions–things I don’t understand. This actually is rather comforting if you think about it. I am the created, not the creator. Therefore it would be rather disheartening if I could really comprehend, really understand. A god I could completely describe and see through, whose every move was explanable and clear, who never amazed or puzzled me, wouldn’t be much of a god.

So I seek to understand–because what greater task is there than trying to understand the will of God and follow–but I’m not suprised when I understand only in part. When my “why” questions or my “how” questions sometimes are answered, as Job’s were, with the resounding thunder of “HEY, YOU, I’M GOD, YOU’RE NOT.” Which, thankfully, is followed by the tender whisper of “but dearheart, you can trust me, even when it doesn’t make sense to you.” I often cling to the rather trite but profound truth that God’s will is what I’d truly want if I only knew what God knows. DUH.

59

How do you know what God wants?

60

It would be presumptuous of me to assume that I know what God wants, wouldn’t it? One of my favorite comic strips is one from Peanuts where Snoopy is writing a book on theology. Charlie Brown asks if he has a title. And he does. The title is “Have You Considered that You Might Be Wrong?”

Of course we have certain core pieces of guidance. Our own conscience speaks to us. We have evidence from the natural world. And, for those of us who choose to accept it, we have input from the scriptures. Taken together, it would be difficult for me to deny that God’s will includes such things as

Loving the Lord our God with all our heart and mind and soul and strength
Loving our neighbors
Refraining from flagrant violations of the social contract - murder, adultery, theft, lying, dishonoring the creator by worshiping creation
Entering into the positive social contract - honoring our parents, respecting times of rest and worship, being thankful for our blessings, sharing our blessings, forgiving others
Denying our selves – that is trying to live lives that are God-centered rather than self-centered
Sharing the insights we have gained about God with respect and humility, knowing we have but a glimpse of His glory

And, of course, I could be wrong. This is but the glimpse that God has given me. The more I know of Him, the more I’m willing to stake my life on it. But I fully expect to be amazed and surprised at my own errors, both in this life and the next.