The Evidential Value of Conversion/Deconversion Stories. Reviewing Mittelberg's "Confident Faith" Part 7

I'm reviewing Mark Mittelberg's book Confident Faith. [See the "Mark Mittelberg" tag below for others].

I want to digress a bit for this post to discuss the value of personal conversion/deconversion stories. [Nomenclature: A conversion story is one which an atheist or nonbeliever becomes a Christian. A deconversion story is one in which a Christian becomes a non-believer or atheist.] In Mittelberg's book, conversion stories seem to play an important role. He discusses the apostle Paul's Damascus Road conversion experience, who was a persecutor of the church then a believer. Then there's Augustine of Hippo's conversion, from out of the pagan religion of Manichaeism. Jumping to our time he tells us of Lee Strobel, an atheist who turned evangelical, and the late Nabeel Qureshi, who was a Muslim but later became an evangelical after discussions with David Wood, who has his own shocking conversion story from atheist to evangelical Christian (which has 825K hits so far!). There is Mark Mittelberg's own story in this book, from a doubter to a confident Christian. He mentions other nonbelievers who became Christians, like Simon Greeleaf, Frank Morison (A.K.A. Albert Henry Ross), C.S. Lewis and Josh McDowell. Mittelberg also exploits the late Antony Flew's story (pp. 144-145), who was an atheist philosopher but came to believe in a deistic creator of the universe (but nothing more).

Mittelberg never tells any Christian-to-atheist deconversion stories. He just tells atheist-to-Christian conversion stories (plus Antony Flew's story). Should we fault him for not telling any deconversion stories? Yes, I think so! For it means he's not offering readers any evidence to consider, but rather trying to persuade them to believe based on the conclusions others reached. His faulty line of reasoning goes this: since atheist person X became a Christian, you should too. Why should that matter? He had asked readers to follow the evidence for themselves. But by putting forth several stories of skeptic/atheist conversions to Christianity he's not actually presenting any objective evidence for the readers to consider. Instead, he's presenting the conclusions of others about the evidence, which is arguing by authority, the very thing he questions later. He had also asked readers to follow logic. But by adopting the conclusion of others just because they adopted it is not logical. Why not just present the evidence? The stories are a propaganda technique designed purposefully to persuade.

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How Much Faith Must the Faithful Have?

Exactly how much faith must the faithful have? If I had a dollar for every time a believer smiled serenely at my pesky questions and then replied with the ultimate slap in my logical face: 

“God requires that we have faith,” 

I’d have accrued a sizable little nest egg by now. It’s the deal breaker reply for me and the believer. Stop the train! Let me get off right now. There’s nothing else that I can say. The ardent believer really BELIEVES that they won the argument with a non-argument. God’s tricky like that, apparently. If I insist on proof that she’s there, she gets offended. 

Why can’t I just believe? 

What’s wrong with ME, not what’s wrong with the expectation that I’m required to just have faith that some kind of god is out there, minding my personal business no less. 

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Dr. Victor Reppert Is Our Gullible Person of the Day, Part 3

This is the final post of three on Victor Reppert, our ignorant gullible person of the day. [See the "Gullible" tag below.] Reppert again, about the gaps to god argument:

Look, when I raise this kind of question, I mean show us by providing evidence. Yes, God could sovereignly perform the act of causing Loftus to believe by going "Loftus, believe," and the next Sunday, Loftus will show up in church on his knees praying to God. But providing evidence is by definition not coercive. Of course God could shove belief in his existence down your throat if he wanted to. But could he give us a good reason to believe in his existence, such that no matter how disinclined we were to want to believe in a being greater than ourselves (so that we would have to admit we were not the supreme beings) whose commandments to us are our moral duties (however much we would like to avoid performing them). Wouldn't there be an escape clause available, no matter what we did?

Reppert says he has reservations about coercive belief, that his god only wants non-coercive belief. For one thing I don't see anyone refusing to believe in Reppert's god because he's bigger than they are. What utter indoctrinated ignorance that is!! Would Reppert say he rejects the existence of Allah due to the fact Allah is bigger than he is? I do however, see a good reason to disbelieve in any god that has commanded and taught the kinds of morality ISIS does, which can also be found in this religion. Any god that allows or commands or regulates slavery, or allows or commands or regulates how that women are to be treated as chattel, is not one I could stomach, much less believe.

Perhaps more to the point of non-coercive belief, if Reppert's god coerced belief in Moses, the Egyptian Pharaoh, Gideon, doubting Thomas, or Paul on the Damascus Road, which the Bible says he did without abrogating their free wills, then he could do it again and again. Surely Reppert knows of Theodore Drange's argument (from memory) that if there are people who want to know the truth it's not coercive to provide them with what they want. I find it extremely difficult to accept the faith-based claim that only a small number of people want to know the truth, such that only evangelicals like Reppert receive the needed evidence to believe.

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Dr. Victor Reppert Is Our Gullible Person of the Day, Part 2

These are Vic Reppert's two atheist talking points:

Here is my real point, which I think has gotten lost here.

There are two atheist talking points that don't mix. Here they are:

1) Look, guys, if God would just give us evidence of his existence, we'd believe in him. The only reason we don't believe is because he hasn't provided evidence of his existence.

2) God of the gaps arguments are always wrong. Any gap in our naturalistic understanding of the world should be dealt with by waiting for science to produce a naturalistic explanation, not by appealing to God.

But anything God might do to reveal his existence could be dismissed as a gap, thus leaving the atheist unaffected. The ban on god of the gaps arguments would allow the atheist to escape no matter what God did to convince us of his existence.

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Victor Reppert asked what it would take for his god to convince us

Reppert:

OK you tell God (just in case he exists) what it would take for him to give you sufficient evidence of his existence, so that you would be on your knees at your local church this Sunday. The stipulation here is that he has to use evidence to get you there, so he can't just fix your brain and make you a believer. We know an omnipotent being can do that. But what you would be asking him to do would be to give you sufficient evidence of his existence.

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What Would Convince Atheists To Become Christians?; Five Definitive Links!

I've kept track of some atheist answers as to what would convince us to believe. Christians say we refuse to believe due to our unwillingness to repent from immoral behaviors. I suppose ISIS could say the same damned thing while chopping off a head. Now don't get me wrong, I think we can legitimately reject religions based on how they treat living things, especially disenfranchised minorities under their control, like slaves, women, children, gays/lesbians, the poor, the aged and animals to mention a few. That's the main point of my anthology that everyone should read, which also explains why atheists spend so much time and effort debunking religion.

Here is the Christian challenge: "I don't believe that if God appeared to us, atheists would believe. For atheists can always make the case that the appearance of God was a hallucination, or a trick by super-advanced extraterrestrials."

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The Introduction To My Last Book, "Unapologetic"

Introduction

This will probably be the last book I’ll write on the topic of religion. I think I’ve said all I need to say. I’ve kicked this dead rodent of the Christian faith into a lifeless blob so many times there is nothing left of it. Mine has been a publishing career that stretches back ten years and ends with this, my tenth book.

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The Philosophical Elitism of Keith Parsons

I'm going to try showing Keith Parsons that he stands a lot to gain by listening to me, that I know what I'm talking about, and that he's wrong about the New Atheism. While I probably won't convince him, keep in mind that an argument doesn't need to be convincing for it to be a good one. I'm going to argue his problem is philosophical elitism. I will do so respectably, although it's that same attitude that may keep him from responding. First, here's a quote from Eric MacDonald endorsing Parsons:

The problem is precisely that the New Atheists think it appropriate to dismiss theology and philosophy of religion without understanding the first thing about it. Some New Atheists say, "I know enough about it. I was brought up as a Catholic or an Anglican or ...." But that's not qualification enough. Arguing from this point of view, where you really do not know what your opponent is arguing, because you have made no attempt to find out, is a simple informal fallacy known as special pleading. And the New Atheism is full of it. That's where Keith Parsons is way ahead of the New Atheists. Be an unbeliever by all means. But don't say that you know that there is no God or that theology is all make believe until you have really tried to understand what theologians are saying. And when you have done so, you will, I think, qualify your dismissal. --Eric MacDonald

I think this criticism of the New Atheism fails to understand the very phenomena being criticized. Let's just re-purpose MacDonald's quote: "The problem is precisely that the New Atheists think it appropriate to dismiss Scientology, or Mormonism, or militant Islam, or Hindu theology, or Haitian Catholic voodoo without understanding the first thing about it..." Need I go on? If anyone is special pleading it is MacDonald, for it didn't enter his mind to consider the many other religious faiths out there he easily dismisses without knowing that much about them. So I think reasonable people don't have to know a lot about religious faiths to reject them. We can dismiss these and other faiths precisely because they are faiths. The evidence is not there and even runs contrary to them. The moralities of these faiths also count against them. Do we need to know something about them to dismiss them? Sure, we should know something about them. In fact, to reject one of them we should at least hear about it. But even a rudimentary level of knowledge is enough for that, since faith is the problem. As outsiders we don't need to look into the many varieties of faith to know the results of faith are not likely to be true. We can do this simply by generalizing from the many mutually inconsistent false faiths to the probability that any given particular faith is false, even before getting an in-depth knowledge about it.

My specialties are theology, philosophical theology and especially apologetics. I am an expert on these subjects even though it's very hard to have a good grasp of them all. Now it's one thing for theologically unsophisticated intellectuals like Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens and Stenger to argue against religion. It's quite another thing for a theologically sophisticated intellectual like myself to say the "New Atheists" were within their epistemic rights to denounce religion from their perspectives. And I do. I can admit they lack the sophistication to understand and respond point for point to sophisticated theology. But it doesn't matter. The reason is because all sophisticated theology is based in faith: faith in the Bible (or Koran) as the word of God, and/or faith in the Nicene creed (or other creeds), and/or faith in a church, synagogue or temple. No amount of sophistication changes this. Even an informed ten year old can come to the correct conclusions about faith without any sophistication at all.

Let's take a serious look at what Parsons said:

Do you need a Ph.D. in philosophy to be a legitimate and respectable participant in the theism/atheism debate or the science/religion debate? Of course not. But you do need to know what you are talking about. Those, however accomplished in other fields, who leap into the debate philosophically uninformed inevitably commit freshman mistakes that expose them to the scorn of sophisticated opponents. LINK.

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My Opening Debate Statement vs Wallace Marshall

The details of the debate can be seen here on Facebook. Below is my 20 minute opening statement. Enjoy below.

Christianity or Atheism? Which Makes More Sense?

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My Interview of Professor Keith Parsons About The Philosophy of Religion

Dr. Keith M. Parsons is on the faculty of The University of Houston--Clear Lake, where he is Associate Professor of Philosophy. He has written a number of books and essays and was the founding editor of the philosophical journal Philo. He also did very well in two debates against William Lane Craig. Keith has honored me with the opportunity to interview him on the philosophy of religion, a topic I'll be writing about in a book titled, Unapologetic: Why the Philosophy of Religion Must End. What prompted this interview was that I noticed he was teaching a Philosophy of Religion (PoR) class after saying he wouldn't teach these classes any longer, or so it appeared seen here. I want to let him clear the air in case he changed his mind (his prerogative if he so chooses), or correct any misunderstandings readers might have. Going beyond this I want to get his present perspectives on the PoR discipline.
The following interview took place as I asked Keith a question via email, to which he responded as his time allowed. Then I would ask him another one, and so on. This was not debate, because I was restricted to asking questions. Even though I threw a few hardball's it wouldn't be fair to characterize this as anything more than a discussion. I interviewed him for the purposes of learning his views more or less, and that's it.

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John: The first question I must ask is why are you teaching a PoR class? Is it just one class, or are there others? Didn't you say you would no longer do so?

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A Reflection On Randal Rauser: Some Final Thoughts On An Interesting and Paradoxical Personality, Guest Post Written by Tristan Vick aka The Advocatus Atheist

Way back in October of 2013 I sat down and read Randal Rauser’s book The Swedish Atheist the Scuba Diver and Other Apologetic Rabbit Trails and then, as is my habit, wrote a series of brief reviews about my impressions on my philosophy of religion blog The Advocatus Atheist.

Initially, I think the thing that struck a chord with me about Randal was that he didn't seem like he was rehashing all the same old Christian apologetic fanfare. Rather, there seemed to be some genuine thought behind his arguments, and I found that rather refreshing (for a religious apologist). Randal is articulate and approaches perceived problems in Christianity differently than other apologists (heck, he even admits there ARE theological problems in Christianity that need addressing – so kudos to him).

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Ten Lessons From Randal Rauser On How Not to Lose Gracefully

Dr. Randal Rauser and I co-wrote the debate book, God or Godless?, according to which, on most accounts he lost. So he's reviewing his own book on his blog. That's not bad in itself, so long as its educational. One should learn from failed attempts, yes. But he's whining, mischaracterizing and special pleading his case. Typical Christian apologist.

Take for instance his review of chapter five. In that chapter he wanted to debate whether science is a substitute for religion. *Cough* Commenting after the fact on his blog he adds:

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Three Definitive Answers To What It Would Take to Convince Atheists To Believe!

Here is the Christian challenge: "I don't believe that if God appeared to us, atheists would believe. For atheists can always make the case that the appearance of God was a hallucination, or a trick by super-advanced extraterrestrials."

This bald assertion is akin to a second Christian claim that the reason atheists don't believe is because we are in conscious (or unconscious) rebellion against God, their particular God. Completely oblivious are they of the fact that they aren't in conscious (or unconscious) rebellion against Allah, or the Jewish God Adonai, or any other different God, or god, or goddess, or demon with their different (and bizarre) moral demands. Christians are narrow-atheists with regard to these other gods, so they judge them to be lacking in sufficient evidence just like wide-atheists do who reject them all. Christians themselves would scoff at the notion they are in rebellion against Allah, you see. So Christians who make this second ignorant assertion cannot be taken seriously if they also make the former ignorant one. The ignorance is one and the same.

Skepticism is a virtue anyway. I think intelligent adults should double-check their experiences to see if they comport with reality. Mature adults should question whether an experience that feels like God might be better explained as a hallucination or produced by aliens. What's wrong with doing this? Nothing I can see at all. I wish believers would do that with their own private subjective experiences, just as former believers like myself have done.

When it comes to believing despite the evidence, readers to consider that the reverse is actually the case, from what I've seen. I've seen Christians revise their faith so much in my lifetime, as the evidence shows one doctrine then another incorrect, that they would probably refuse to believe if scientists discovered the elusive Theory of Everything. They would just say God did it. So I think Christians are projecting upon atheists what they themselves would do in light of a massive amount of counter-evidence. They would still believe despite it. In fact, they already do.

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Here is Andrew Lamprecht's Deconversion Story

Andrew Lamprecht is a former Christian living in Adrian, Michigan, who is an aspiring author. Enjoy. See if his story resonates with you.

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My Response to Ed Brayton of Freethought Blogs

Ed Brayton says he welcomes disagreement. Does he? If we both started driving toward each other we could meet halfway in an hour and a half for a few beers and laughs. We are that close to each other in our views too. We are not world’s apart. I suspect he welcomes disagreement from people he considers his friends. Am I his friend? We shall see. While Ed appreciates my work very much (thanks so much Ed!) he recently answered two questions of mine and offered two basic criticisms of me. Let's start with the questions.

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An Interview With Richard Carrier About His Book, "Proving History"

Richard Carrier has kindly agreed to answer some questions I posed after reading his soon to be released book Proving History: Bayes's Theorem and the Quest for the Historical Jesus (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. 2012). This book introduces Bayes’s Theorem as a basis for assessing whether or not Jesus existed, a subject he will deal with in a forthcoming book titled, “On the Historicity of Jesus Christ.”

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It's Possible That Evangelical Christianity is the True Faith

Okay, I've said it. It's possible Christians are right after all. But then it's possible the Loch Ness Monster exists and is evading our attempts to detect her too! Christians must be convinced that their faith is nearly impossible before they will ever consider it to be improbable, which is an utterly unreasonable standard. There are at least two reasons why they demand such a high standard of disproof. The first is what I call the Omniscience Escape Clause (read all the links in this post!). The other reason is Pascal's Wager, in that unless the Christian faith is shown to be nearly impossible the threat of hell still holds sway over the minds of believers. I would think however, that if their faith is shown to be improbable that should be good enough. Here then are several ways where believers, especially evangelicals (my target audience), try escaping out from underneath the weight of probabilities:

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In Defense of William Lane Craig

What follows is my four part defense of Bill Craig placed into one long post. I thought I'd put together all of the relevant posts and comments for further reference.

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The Anatomy of a Conversion: Richard Morgan, From Atheist to Christian

I read with some interest Richard Morgan's conversion to Christianity. I wanted to know how deeply committed he was as an atheist and what caused him to change his mind. I'd like to know more about him, but all we have is this article he wrote for a publication called The Monthly Record, beginning on page 8 and highlighted by several Christian websites. Morgan seems to have been a committed atheist, who was a frequent visitor on Richard Dawkin's site forum. There was a Christian guy named David Robertson who also posted there who was kind and thoughtful. And what he said and how he said it had an impact on Morgan, when everyone else there ridiculed this guy. Then for some reason the atheists began to belittle Morgan, perhaps because he was becoming sympathetic to David Robertson and his views. So Morgan defected to a theistic site where he encountered two questions that changed his life, as he tells us:

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If Nothing Else Look at the Trend, From Conservative to Moderate to Liberal to Agnostic to Atheist

[Written by John W. Loftus] In Ed Babinski's book, Leaving The Fold: Testimonies Of Former Fundamentalists, published seven years ago, there are testimonies from former fundamentalists who became moderates, liberals, and even "ultra liberals," like Dewey Beegle, Harvey Cox, Conrad Hyers, Robert Price (who now describes himself as a "Christian atheist"), and seven others. We could add other names like Howard Van Till, Valerie Tarico, John Hick, Marcus Borg, John A. T. Robertson, James Wall, Andrew Furlong, and James Sennett. In another section there are testimonies of former fundamentalists who became agnostics, like Ed himself, Charles Templeton, Farrell Till, and five others. We could add other names like Robert Ingersoll, William Dever, Bart Ehrman, and William Lobdell. In still another section of his book there are former fundamentalists who became atheists, like Dan Barker, Jim Lippard, Harry McCall, Frank Zindler, and four others. We could add other names like Hector Avalos, Michael Shermer, Ken Daniels, Ken Pulliam, Jason Long, Joe Holman, Paul Tobin, myself and many many others. I can't remember all the names of the important people who left fundamentalist Christianity because there are simply too many of them to remember! If you read Ex.Christian.net, deconversion stories are posted there almost every day.

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