Another One Leaves the Fold...Is there Anything Comparable on the Christian Side of the Fence?


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I just want to note that what is common to every team member here at DC, along with Robert M. Price, John Beversluis, Hector Avalos, Michael Shermer, Bart Ehrman, William Dever, and so on, is that we were very serious about our faith and studied to defended it against the skeptics, but in the end we abandoned the effort and abandoned our faith. Is there anything comparable on the Christian side of the fence with skeptics who were very serious about their skepticism and studied to defend it against Christianity who subsequently abandoned the effort and became evangelical Christians? Surely if Christianity is true, serious skeptics who adopted the Christian faith should be commonplace. Where are they?

31 comments:

RobHu said...

Arguably Christians could point to Flew, although uncertainty about his recent mental health and who actually wrote his latest book would make the wise commentor cautious to make any claim greater than him being a deist.

It's unlikely you'd see many converts from atheism to Christianity because there are far fewer atheists than Christians.

Tim Eapen said...

Anthony Flew is not a Christian but a deist and he certainly does not believe in the Christian 'god'. Here is what he states in a 2004 interview:

"I'm thinking of a God very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam, because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins..."

You can read the article here: http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/atheist_philosopher_041210.html

RobHu said...

I think the issue is far from obvious because Flew seems to have retreated from the public eye and is not commenting publicly about these discussions.

I did say that it wouldn't be wise to say he was anything more than a deist, so I'm not sure why you responded as you did.

The best place to stay informed about Flew seems to be Richard Carrier's blog. He's one of the few people to have stayed in contact with Flew asking appropriate questions over the last few years.

Anonymous said...

robhu said...It's unlikely you'd see many converts from atheism to Christianity because there are far fewer atheists than Christians.

Atheists/agnostics now have the numbers to be the second largest denomination in America. 1/4th of us could very well fall into this group.

So if Christianity is true by a wide margin of evidence, then what should we expect coming from the other side? And what do we see? Do the math and let us know. ;-)

RobHu said...

OK, so where are your stats showing that conversions from atheism to Christianity are significantly more rare than the other way around?

I suspect (but I could well be wrong) that searching YouTube would find a whole bunch of people who had no religious beliefs, but now think they've found glorious salvation in Christianity.

I don't know the US situation very well as I'm from the UK, but I will say that as a former Christian I know quite a number of people who have converted to Christianity from a position of unbelief. As they say though, the plural of anecdote is not data.

Anonymous said...

OK, so where are your stats showing that conversions from atheism to Christianity are significantly more rare than the other way around?

I wasn't talking about mere conversions. Read what I said again.

I know quite a number of people who have converted to Christianity from a position of unbelief.

Again, that's not relevant to the question I asked.

And I'm asking Christians to provide me with the data. Can they?

brian green said...

Great Clip! This is my story also and I guess many like us. I also regret all the wasted years in the faith and wonder how much more my life could have been without the dogma.

benjdm said...

This question has been looked into fairly thoroughly:

Asymmetry of conversion

Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said...

At the risk of opening myself up for an obvious put down. I was the sort of skeptic you describe (so was C.S. Lewis not that I'm putting myself in his category--I didn't go to Oxford). I was a serious skeptic and studied and was writing a book to disprove the Bible.

yes, only 2 billion more Christians to go now.

I know other Christians who were the same way, serious graduate students.

Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said...

Atheists/agnostics now have the numbers to be the second largest denomination in America. 1/4th of us could very well fall into this group.


are you going by the inflationary figures? I have the evidence to prove they can't be more than 3%. the 12% figure includes 9% who say on polls they could believe in some form of God but not the Christian God.

3% just barely more than the number of communists in America during the cold war (based upon subscriptions to People's Daily World and known membership in all fourth international groups). Probably some overlap there. Every commie subscribed to the same papers five times over--but then every "serious" atheist gives favorable reviews to his blog partners on Amazon.

Anonymous said...

Joe, you are not an evangelical Christian so your conversion doesn't apply to my specific question.

You could tell us why you aren't if you'd like. ;-)

Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said...

that was meant as a joke, a play jibe not an insult.

Anonymous said...

Joe, if the questions asked in a poll do not compare apples to apples and separate agnostics and atheists into separate grupings, then it does make our numbers smaller. In the Times/Harris Poll these distinctions are correctly specified so their poll achieves better results.

Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said...

Joe, you are not an evangelical Christian so your conversion doesn't apply to my specific question.

You could tell us why you aren't if you'd like. ;-)

ah, I see. It depends upon how you define it. I am not an inerantist. I am qualify as what they call "new Evangelical. I believe there is a point to evangelism. There's something to evangelize people for (although not to escape hell). But I'm not an inerantist because I attended a liberal seminary (Perkins, flagship of the UMC fleet) and learned Greek. So I know where all the class A mistakes that can't be denied."

M. Tully said...

jlh,

You wrote that, “I was the sort of skeptic you describe (so was C.S. Lewis not that I'm putting myself in his category--I didn't go to Oxford). “

Obviously, I won’t try to speak for you, but I’m not convinced that C.S. Lewis fits the category.

When John describes the people he is referring to he states, “…is that we were very serious about our faith and studied to defended it against the skeptics…”

I honestly can’t recall Lewis ever writing about how he, as a convinced skeptic, defended the naturalistic worldview against theists. Nor am totally convinced that he was ever a thorough going atheist. I seem to recall him saying as much in one of his works.

Mark Browning said...

Oh mighty Regent of Reason . . . isn't this simply an ad populem argument.
IF 99 people moved from point A to point B, but the 100th person, adhering to point B, happened to be correct, then the 99 would be utterly meaningless.
In other words, WHAT'S YOUR POINT?

Victor Reppert said...

Lewis, in his letters to Arthur Greeves, defends his atheism and attacks Christianity. Just pick up a copy of They Stand Together and read it for yourself.

Unknown said...

How many times have you encountered someone who has said that they are not "religious" but they are "spiritual"? These are eventual atheists.

Arjuna said...

I think they are called schizophrenic, no? There are really quite a few of them!

Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said...

I honestly can’t recall Lewis ever writing about how he, as a convinced skeptic, defended the naturalistic worldview against theists. Nor am totally convinced that he was ever a thorough going atheist. I seem to recall him saying as much in one of his works.


I wasn't thinking so much about actually arguing with people. I did but not formally. But Lewis was an intellectual, a thinker, a student. He studied the issues. He was actively living an intellectual life that embrassed atheism.

Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said...

Oh mighty Regent of Reason . . . isn't this simply an ad populem argument.
IF 99 people moved from point A to point B, but the 100th person, adhering to point B, happened to be correct, then the 99 would be utterly meaningless.
In other words, WHAT'S YOUR POINT?


John brought it up. what's his point?

Joseph Hinman (Metacrock) said...

How many times have you encountered someone who has said that they are not "religious" but they are "spiritual"? These are eventual atheists.

that's ridiculous. one of the main things atheists are going to have to do in this coming decade is deicide what atheism is about.

M. Tully said...

Victor,

Am I to equate the musings of an adolescent boy who was experimenting with occultism at the time as the same as a studied skeptic writing from a position of reflective equilibrium?

Perhaps you should pick up “Mere Christianity” and read it for yourself (I think it was within the first forty or so pages if I remember correctly).

Anonymous said...

isn't this simply an ad populem argument.

Nope. Do you know what that is?

IF 99 people moved from point A to point B, but the 100th person, adhering to point B, happened to be correct, then the 99 would be utterly meaningless.

Really? I don't think so at all. Surely you'll reply that it has nothing to do with whether they are correct, and I agree.

In other words, WHAT'S YOUR POINT?

I believe it was a question. So what's the point of the question? It has to do with the probability of whether or not evangelicalism is true. If many former evangelicals abandon their faith as they study it out with little or no comparison among atheists who do likewise, then it is cause for doubt.

I think the point was obvious.

Anonymous said...

M Tully, I would appreciate it if you treated Vic with the respect he deserves as a C.S. Lewis scholar. He certainly knows Lewis better than you or I will ever know, even if we might disagree with him.

So Lewis is the one example in modern times, eh?

Interesting, very interesting.

Anonymous said...

BW, I consider John Beversluis' latest book on C.S. Lewis to be a devestating critique of his apologetics. It's linked in our sidebar.

GordonBlood said...

Atheists/agnostics now have the numbers to be the second largest denomination in America. 1/4th of us could very well fall into this group.

As I have said before, I believe it is inappropriate to combine the two. Most agnostics I have met are, at the very least, as anti-atheist as they are anti-religious or whatnot. Indeed I must say that in my own experience most agnostics if you press them are considerably closer to the theistic position then the atheistic position. As far as intellectuals who converted to Christianity as adults I consider Mortimer Adler, Alasdair Macintyre, Jacques Maritain, GEM Anscombe etc etc.

So if Christianity is true by a wide margin of evidence, then what should we expect coming from the other side? And what do we see? Do the math and let us know. ;-)

Obviously John that assumes that plenty of people will look at the evidence itself honestly. Plenty of people, and youve said this many times yourself about Christians but the same is true of atheists, choose arbitrarily based on what they like. Thomas Nagel himself has said he is an agnostic because he doesnt like a world in which there is one power above everything. So one needs to keep that into consideration. More importantly however we must look at the arguments themselves, which is quite wholly apart from how many people believe them (as an atheist John you really have to believe that plenty of very intelligent people believe very "silly" things.

GordonBlood said...

Hmm... one more thing I should have said. You seem to confusingly go back and forth between Evangelical Christians (of the inerrantist stripe) and all other Christians. If you are simply referring to atheists who become fundamentalists or quite close to that position John then your argument is pretty much full-proof, it doesnt happen very often. However, if that is your ammunition of choice then you arent even touching the massive body of Christians. It would be like me proving that atheists who choose atheism because its "daring" and out of the norm are not being reasonable. Yeah, sure, it does prove that those atheists are pretty rediculous, but it doesnt prove atheism to be true.

Anonymous said...

GB said...You seem to confusingly go back and forth between Evangelical Christians (of the inerrantist stripe) and all other Christians. If you are simply referring to atheists who become fundamentalists or quite close to that position John then your argument is pretty much full-proof, it doesnt happen very often.

Thank you! Although I'm not just taking aim at inerrantists, but evangelicals as a whole, and the point is the same one.

Remember, all ye who enter here, we're dealing with evangelical Christianity. Don't fault an argument that is not intended for other verisons.

IrishFarmer said...

Man. The more babies the guy had, the worse his expression got in those photos! Fortunately, that's at least six years off for me.

I do have to add one jab, because...well, its me.

He partially lost his faith because of stuff like "The God Who Wasn't There"?!

I don't think I want any Christian claiming to come to the faith because they bought into a bunch of nonsense.

Shane said...

I feel quite sad for the chap in that clip; how can he say he wasted 33 years? Yeah, the Christianity was all untrue, but there's more to life. When I became an atheist ("officially" in Jerusalem in 1993 when I was 23 - long story) it felt like opening the shutters onto a bright new world, but there were a few major down-spots where I could have felt like our dude at the end of his clip there. But it gets better. Several members of my family who initially couldn't even *talk* to me after my "deconversion" have now also thrown off the shackles, and family life is better than ever.

So, dude-in-clip, if you're ever reading this, keep the old pecker up. Thanks for sharing the clip; remember that "meaning" in life is what you make of it - I suggest your relationships with other people. "Nothing done for the Lord is wasted" ;-) - chalk it up to life experience, because I can tell that a bit further down the line you are going to be a great help to other people leaving the fold. Well done.