Dr. Paul Copan: "De-Conversion: Why People Leave the Christian Faith and (Re)Turn to It"
Paul Copan is a friend of mine. Like me, he earned a master's degree under William Lane Craig. Then like me, he went on to study at Marquette University for his PhD. He also wrote a few books, as I have done. See his Wikipedia page for more.
Recently Paul gave a talk with the above title. Apparently he's feeling the heat from polls showing what appears to be the demise of evangelicalism. In his talk he discusses several important ex-Christians and why they left the fold. He includes me at 8:10, and then again when discussing The Outsider Test for Faith (OTF) at 22:10.
Copan considers the challenges that ex-Christians present for the Christian faith. He considers mine to be challenge #1. He does not object to the OTF in his talk. He's embracing it, so it seems, just as Dr. Wallace Marshall has done. That's very significant since Copan served for six years as the President of the Evangelical Philosophical Society. Here are his slides on the OTF:
1) Should consider what nonbelievers themselves agree are problems for naturalism.
2) Should take note that many non-Christians are embracing Christianity down through the centuries.
3) Should consider that Christianity is not indifferent or contrary to evidence.
4) Should consider the number of scientists who profess belief in the Christian God.
Along the way, Copan shows us a few people who deconverted and then later came back to the fold.
Paul Copan's discussion of the OTF misses the whole point of who is an outsider. The outsider is a nonbeliever considering a religion, any religion. I've described this person as an agnostic, which I call the default position. The OTF asks believers to look at all religions, especially their own, as if they were nonbelievers. Doing this mental exercise means honestly trying to evaluate one's own culturally inherited indoctrinated religion from the perspective of a nonbeliever.
What Copan should do, if he really embraced the OTF, is to tell how to spot religions that aren't based on evidence, what the criteria are for rejecting them, and why those same reasons should apply consistently to his own Christian faith. He should first do this and then later try to show why his own inherited religious faith passes these same criteria afterwards.
By contrast, Copan is saying what nonbelievers should consider when evaluating his own Christian faith. Would he say the same kinds of things if he were a Muslim, an Orthodox Jew or a Hindu on behalf of these faiths? You bet your sweet bippy he would, which is the point. He does so in hopes outsiders will choose to believe in Christianity, with arguments that are little more than special pleading, which is something the OTF explicitly rejects as unbecoming of a thinking adult.
He could say the same things if he were a Muslim, that outsiders:
1) Should consider what nonbelievers themselves agree are problems for naturalism.
2) Should take note that many non-Muslims are embracing Islam down through the centuries.
3) Should consider that Islam is not indifferent or contrary to evidence.
4) Should consider the number of scientists who profess belief in Allah.
With regard to the evidential weight of conversion and deconversion stories on behalf of Christianity, or any religion, I've written a pretty detailed post on this: The evidential value of conversion/deconversion stories. Toward the end I offered several important factors when assessing the evidential weight of deconversion stories over conversion stories.
Cheers. What are your thoughts?
Recently Paul gave a talk with the above title. Apparently he's feeling the heat from polls showing what appears to be the demise of evangelicalism. In his talk he discusses several important ex-Christians and why they left the fold. He includes me at 8:10, and then again when discussing The Outsider Test for Faith (OTF) at 22:10.
Copan considers the challenges that ex-Christians present for the Christian faith. He considers mine to be challenge #1. He does not object to the OTF in his talk. He's embracing it, so it seems, just as Dr. Wallace Marshall has done. That's very significant since Copan served for six years as the President of the Evangelical Philosophical Society. Here are his slides on the OTF:
Copan argues that outsiders:
1) Should consider what nonbelievers themselves agree are problems for naturalism.
2) Should take note that many non-Christians are embracing Christianity down through the centuries.
3) Should consider that Christianity is not indifferent or contrary to evidence.
4) Should consider the number of scientists who profess belief in the Christian God.
Along the way, Copan shows us a few people who deconverted and then later came back to the fold.
Paul Copan's discussion of the OTF misses the whole point of who is an outsider. The outsider is a nonbeliever considering a religion, any religion. I've described this person as an agnostic, which I call the default position. The OTF asks believers to look at all religions, especially their own, as if they were nonbelievers. Doing this mental exercise means honestly trying to evaluate one's own culturally inherited indoctrinated religion from the perspective of a nonbeliever.
What Copan should do, if he really embraced the OTF, is to tell how to spot religions that aren't based on evidence, what the criteria are for rejecting them, and why those same reasons should apply consistently to his own Christian faith. He should first do this and then later try to show why his own inherited religious faith passes these same criteria afterwards.
By contrast, Copan is saying what nonbelievers should consider when evaluating his own Christian faith. Would he say the same kinds of things if he were a Muslim, an Orthodox Jew or a Hindu on behalf of these faiths? You bet your sweet bippy he would, which is the point. He does so in hopes outsiders will choose to believe in Christianity, with arguments that are little more than special pleading, which is something the OTF explicitly rejects as unbecoming of a thinking adult.
He could say the same things if he were a Muslim, that outsiders:
1) Should consider what nonbelievers themselves agree are problems for naturalism.
2) Should take note that many non-Muslims are embracing Islam down through the centuries.
3) Should consider that Islam is not indifferent or contrary to evidence.
4) Should consider the number of scientists who profess belief in Allah.
With regard to the evidential weight of conversion and deconversion stories on behalf of Christianity, or any religion, I've written a pretty detailed post on this: The evidential value of conversion/deconversion stories. Toward the end I offered several important factors when assessing the evidential weight of deconversion stories over conversion stories.
Cheers. What are your thoughts?
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