Not on SDMB, but I have seen a couple of deconversions on other message boards, and I am happy I was one of those who help out.
-A good question, and since all I know of the man and the myth is what I’ve read on the less-than-objective threads here on the 'Dope (typically the Pit, actually) I couldn’t say for sure.
However, also reading about how people have been given those tracts and mini-comic-books as things like Halloween gifts, and being left them as tips in resteraunts, and having them handed to them in airports and bus stations, I wager somebody is allowing them to speak for their sect/denomination.
Doc Nickel writes:
> However, also reading about how people have been given
> those tracts and mini-comic-books as things like Halloween
> gifts, and being left them as tips in resteraunts, and having
> them handed to them in airports and bus stations, I wager
> somebody is allowing them to speak for their
> sect/denomination.
I’m not doubting that he has a few followers who are distributing his tracts. These people are probably doing it voluntarily, but for all we know it could be that he has to pay people to distribute the tracts. And he must have some rich person who’s bankrolling him (although it could be that he’s independently rich himself). But I don’t think that any well known minister, let alone any denomination, is backing him.
Furthermore, I’ve never heard of anyone who has ever been converted to Christianity because of reading Jack Chick tracts. On the contrary, I suspect that more people have lost their faith because of the tracts than have gained it. I think it’s easy to overestimate the popularity of something that you see in the public sphere. You figure that anything you see or hear of a dozen times must have some sort of modest popularity. But I think you underestimate the power of a single person with money and a few industrious followers. In any case, I think that Jack Chick is unrepresentative of any significant Christian group, and that it’s unfair to take his rants as being of any significance in a discussion of Christianity.
The Dope has strenghtened(?) my wishy-washy agnostism (can a wishy-washy positioned be strengthened?).
My view of organized religion has not changed. Organized religion is a bane to all civilization. I thought that before I got here and I continue to believe that. However, the evidence that there may be an overriding “spirit” has yet to be disproved and reading these boards has shown me that it may not be possible to disprove.
Well, if the question is solely whether the SDMB convinced me to become an atheist, then the answer is no since I was one before I got here (which wasn’t all that long ago).
However, if the question is whether logical debate (such as that found here on the SMDB) can influence somebody’s faith, then I would have to say most definitely. Like pepperlandgirl, I was raised a devout Mormon. For many years I struggled with the fact that I didn’t have any strong belief in God, until I had what I felt was a religious “epiphany” at the age of 19 after much prayer. I felt that God had personally talked to my mind and soul and I wept with joy that I could finally say that I knew that he existed.
Things went a bit downhill from there, however. I now “knew” that God existed because of my experience, but this just led to more and more confusion as I learned how little the world made sense when viewed through Godcentric goggles. I struggled with the problem of evil, the fact that there is so much suffering, the fact that so many different religions all claimed to know “the truth” while simultaneously disagreeing fundamentally with each other, the fact that so much of the world does not have a concept of God at all, the fact that every day science finds yet another contradiction with the way the world is described in the Bible, etc., etc., etc. Each time, I clung to my new-found “knowledge” of God as a way of ignoring these issues. And the older I got, the less satisfied and more miserable I grew.
What “saved” me (pardon the word) was the Internet. The SDMB wasn’t around back then, but I did find a lot of sites which included rational discussions of the very issues with which I was struggling. And when I finally read about how people can easily delude themselves into having religious experiences, and how what I felt had a very normal physical explanation, I rejoiced as the scales fell from my eyes. I may not believe that Jesus was divine, but I definitely think he got it right when he said “The truth shall set you free.”
There is, of course, a lot more to my story, but that’s the gist of it.
Barry
well, I was a theist when I first joined this board and I’m an atheist now. It’s possible that the SDMB had something to do with it. It wasn’t one of the main factors though. My conversion from Republican-voting Libertarian to Democrat-voting Libertarian was definately influenced by this board however.