But WHY Did You Leave Atheism for Christianity?

I recently saw a post on the Thomistic Bent blog about an atheist who converted to Christianity. It is definitely an interesting topic to me, atheists and Christians argue back and forth all the time, but people actually changing their minds is pretty rare. What would make someone actually change their mind is certainly something I would like to read about. Furthermore, the opening line of the post is the following

(credit: 1/25 Stryker Brigade Combat Team)

Another person has become Christian due to being faced with the message of the Bible and the strong evidence of Christianity.

Great! I would love to see what this evidence is. I of course expect that it will be the same apologetics that we typically see, but who knows. Perhaps it is something I've never seen before. Or maybe it's just put in a new way or something. I don't know, but I am definitely intrigued. He talks about how she fought to keep away from God but in the end God won out. Not what I'm looking for, but luckily he links to an article that she wrote about her conversion. Great! Now I can go find out what this evidence was.

There are a few ways this could go, as I said above it could be the standard apologetic arguments, another is personal revelation. But this one went the most annoying way (and unfortunately what seems to be the most common). She describes all of the strong evidence for Christianity that got her to convert, but she doesn't actual tell us what any of that evidence is. Here are some excerpts:

Tim Keller's sermon was intellectually rigorous, weaving in art and history and philosophy.

Care to tell us what was in those sermons? Guess not.

Each week, Keller made the case for Christianity. He also made the case against atheism and agnosticism. He expertly exposed the intellectual weaknesses of a purely secular worldview. 

What was the case for Christianity? What was the case against atheism and agnosticism? If he made the case so well why not repeat it to us?

After about eight months of going to hear Keller, I concluded that the weight of evidence was on the side of Christianity.

Care to tell me what a single piece of that evidence is?

Then one night in 2006, on a trip to Taiwan, I woke up in what felt like a strange cross between a dream and reality. Jesus came to me and said, "Here I am." It felt so real. I didn't know what to make of it. I called my boyfriend, but before I had time to tell him about it, he told me he had been praying the night before and felt we were supposed to break up. So we did. Honestly, while I was upset, I was more traumatized by Jesus visiting me. 

Bible Study 1 (Photo credit: DrGBB)

Is this the real reason she converted? It seems to be, it's the only reason she really described in detail. Anyway, she had trouble processing the experience and a friend told her to go to a bible study, this is what she said about it [emphasis mine]

I remember walking into the Bible study. I had a knot in my stomach. In my mind, only weirdoes and zealots went to Bible studies. I don't remember what was said that day. All I know is that when I left, everything had changed. I'll never forget standing outside that apartment on the Upper East Side and saying to myself, "It's true. It's completely true." The world looked entirely different, like a veil had been lifted off it. I had not an iota of doubt. I was filled with indescribable joy.

So this bible study completely changed her view of the world, but she can't remember what was said in there at all. This completely betrays that her reasons for converting were largely (if not completely) emotional. How can it be logical and based on reason if you can't recount what those reasons even are? How can it be based on evidence if you don't even remember what the evidence was? If you want to change your entire belief system based purely on emotion and personal revelation so be it, but don't try to tell me it is based on reason, logic, and evidence.

Do We Just See What We Want to See?

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Last year I started this blog to read the Bible and find out what is in it for myself. My motivation from the beginning was that I would often hear atheists claim that the bible is full of really terrible things and Christians would always claim that it was full of really wonderful things. Both sides seem to think that if you read the Bible you would come around to their way of thinking. A very curious situation indeed. Before I started I figured there were a couple possibilities for what I would find.

1. The Atheists were completely right, the bible is full of horrible things, God is a jerk, Jesus is overrated, and while there are a few good verses here and there, they are vastly outnumbered by bad verses
2. The Christians were completely right, the bible is full of good things. Sure, there are a few passages that look bad in isolation, but when taken as a whole even those passages make sense coming from a loving God
3. The truth lies between both of these extremes. There are enough passages on both sides of the ledger that each group can pay attention to stuff that fits their point of view and ignore things that don't. 

When I started this, I assumed that 3 would be reality. The interesting part would be to discover how much it leans towards either option 1 or 2. I think it is important to be as fair as possible, to count both the good and bad equally. In fact, given my bias I think it is important to push things in the opposite direction a bit, try to highlight any little bit of good I come across, and dispense with the nitpicky bad things (or at least admit they are nitpicky). I think I succeed pretty well in this matter most of the time, I really try to highlight good aspects of the reading, the Christian commentaries have definitely helped me on that account a few times.

Nevertheless, after reading all of the New Testament and Genesis all I see is number 1. There are terrible things everywhere and there's not that much good stuff. What's more, the good stuff is usually mixed up with an equal portion of bad (take the sermon on the mount for example). It's hard to me to imagine someone sitting down and reading this book and thinking it came from a loving God, and yet they do. I used to think that Christians must just not read the thing, but I come across people all the time who do read it. People say they have read it cover to cover X number of times in their life. I will occasionally see someone post the challenge to read the whole bible in 90 days and chart their progress. 

What the hell is going on here? How can we both read the same book and have such a different impression of it? Is it not as bad as I think and not as good as they think? I think I can make a pretty compelling argument that there is a ton of horrible things in the bible, but am I also missing a bunch of good stuff? Honestly, I don't think so. I think there are many stories that I count as bad and they count as good. Look at when God commanded Abraham to kill Isaac for example. I read that story and I'm horrified at what I see, obviously both the God character and the Abraham character here are terrible. And yet Christians will almost universally describe this as a good story because Abraham is obedient. They want the bible to be a good book, and so they twist their perception to make it good even when it is plainly not. They are seeing what they want to see.

Now the question is, am I doing the same thing from the other side? Am I looking for the bible to be a piece of shit and that is what I'm finding? I feel like I try to be as fair as possible and highlight the positive as well as the negative. I really try not to be bias, but it's pretty hard to explain the disconnect without it. Is it really reasonable for me to think they are taking a book that is THAT terrible and twisting their perception to see it as good, or am I also twisting my perception to make it worse than it is? While I think it is important for me to be self-reflective and consider my own bias here, looking at a few examples such as the Abraham and Isaac story it really does seem that I'm on solid ground. In that story there's no middle ground to be reached. God is a horrible character and so is Abraham. The question then becomes whether that story is typical of the bible or an extreme example.

Yes, I Could Be Wrong, I'm Fine With That

I had a fun conversation with a Christian on twitter a few days ago. I think it was a pretty normal sparring match for the most part over a pretty standard battleground for these types of things. But there was one point that he kept returning to, "you could be wrong".

The first time (and every subsequent time) he brought up this point I said yes, I could be wrong. The thing is, everyone could be wrong, if we are being honest with ourselves we have to admit this is a possibility. We are all missing some information and we can't think of everything. There are certainly logical arguments that I haven't thought of on any given topic, and it's possible that my mind could be changed. Furthermore, if I'm wrong about something, there is almost certainly evidence out there that I have either never seen or mistakenly dismissed showing that I am wrong.

AMS

The thing is, I am not alone here, we all could be wrong about any given topic. This is especially true if we disagree about something, one of us is right and the other is wrong (or potentially both are wrong). So how do we go about determining which of us is wrong? He was attacking the fact that I want to use logic and reason, "how can you be so sure of your logic?" He's right, my logic might be flawed, but as far as I can tell, the only way to combat bad logic is good logic. This is always a possibility, demonstrate a flaw in my argument and provide an alternative. Of course Christians will often want to use faith as an alternative, but this is no good. I would ask what they would do if they come across someone with a different answer which was also arrived at through faith, there doesn't seem to be any way for them to determine who is right (if one of them is indeed right).

I think what really bugged me about this was that he seemed to be happy when I said I might be wrong. It was like he tricked me into admitting it or something. This doesn't mean he wins, it just means I'm accepting an essential truth which he is refusing to do. Furthermore, I would argue that since I am open to being wrong and changing my opinion, and since I accept that I might have made a mistake in the past and am willing to refine my positions, I have a much better chance of being correct than him. Admitting that you don't know something really is a path toward truth, asserting that you Know the Truth is not. I could be wrong and I'm fine with it. Actually, I'm proud to admit this fact. Being comfortable with "I don't know" and being willing to alter your positions is a virtue.

A Conversation Between Dawkins and a Young Earth Creationist

I've watched a ton of formal debates, and I am totally sick of them. The way they usually work is that both sides have a few items prepared, they talk past each other in 5 or 10 minute increments a few times, then at some point there will be rebuttals, but so much has been said already that the vast majority of it is never addressed. It's not terribly uncommon that in closing argument one party will point out that all of their assertions were not considered and then claim victory. I'm pretty much done watching these debates, but there are certainly times when I would like to watch something else along the same lines.

Recently Lady Atheist posted a link to an interview between Richard Dawkins and a Young Earth Creationist. This format I like a lot better, it is much more conversational and they are able to explore ideas and interact much more than in a debate format. If anyone knows of other good videos in a more conversational format I'd love to watch them. If you toss in a comment I'll edit the original post and put it up here. BTW, I'm sure if I don't mention it someone will suggest the atheist experience, I listen to that show every week. I'm guessing everyone reading my blog is aware of them, but if not you should go check them out.

**edit**
I haven't had the chance to watch it yet, but in the comments Christian suggested a video where Dawkins interviews a creationist.

What Does Knowledge Really Mean?

When talking about atheism/theism and arguing with theists, there is a lot of talk about knowledge and belief. Many atheists tend to adopt the agnostic atheist label, saying they don't believe that gods exist but also saying that they don't know for sure. This leads me to the obvious question, what do we mean when we say we know something? What is knowledge?

In a certain sense we don't know anything. I could be a brain in a vat connected to the matrix, you might not exist at all, but are merely a figment of my imagination, we could both just be a part of someone's dream. We can never be sure that some craziness like this isn't happening, in that sense we don't know anything. But this definition of knowledge isn't useful, and it's not really the way we use the word except when we talk about god or perhaps during drunk philosophical conversations (seriously, I throw great parties).

If I hold a pencil out at eye level and let go, it is possible that a glitch in the matrix will make it hover, it is possible that an alien has a tractor beam on it that will pull it to the ceiling when I let go, it is possible that god will perform a miracle and make it fly against the wall instead of toward the floor. In this sense, there are incredibly low probability things that could happen and we can't say with 100% certainty what will happen next, and yet we are all comfortable saying that we know the pencil will simply fall to the ground. Why is it that in this example everyone is perfectly happy to say they know for sure what will happen to the pencil, but when we talk about god people are so quick to fall into this "we can't know anything for sure" nonsense?

Pic Source

We all know Santa doesn't exist, we know the easter bunny doesn't exist, we know that Zeus isn't real, in all of these other examples we don't bend over backwards to quality everything. Nobody says "We can't be 100% sure where the presents under this tree came from", we all know that the parents bought them and put them there while their kids slept. I know that my parents did this when I was a kid. Nobody will take me to task for making that statement. Why is it so taboo, even among other atheists, to say that I know that God doesn't exist?

The only other wrinkle here is what is meant by a God. In these discussions people will often back up to a deist God who created the universe and then was hands off. They have a point there, in relation to that God it makes sense to be an agnostic atheist. But let's be honest, that is not the God we are usually talking about. We are talking about Yahweh, a God who knows everything, has absolute power, cares about us, and interferes in our lives. This God doesn't exist, it just doesn't make any sense.

I think for any reasonable definition of knowledge, I can safely say that I know Yahweh doesn't exist. Am I going to start calling myself a gnostic atheist? I don't know, I imagine it would cause more problems than it would solve even though I think it is accurate. I can hear it now, people would say that I now have accepted the burden of proof and have to prove that God doesn't exist. But let's think back to our examples of Santa and the easter bunny. We are all perfectly comfortable saying we know they don't exist. We are gnostic a-santa-ists, we are gnostic a-bunists, where is our burden of proof there? I imagine we are all happy with the lack of evidence where we would expect evidence to be. Why isn't that enough for yahweh?

I believe that God does not exist

There is this idea I see from atheists a lot that my post title is a statement I should not make. I should instead say "I do not accept any God claims" or something more along those lines. The purpose is related to the burden of proof, if I reject the claim of the theist, then the burden of proof is clearly on them, and I am claiming that they have failed to meet this burden, whereas if I try to claim that God does not exist, I am taking on the burden of proof. While there is a time and place for this kind of care, in general I do not like it. It feels a little disingenuous and I don't think it helps in a discussion with a rank and file Christian. I don't think pussyfooting around advances our cause.

While it is true that I reject every God claim that I have heard, I can also honestly say that I believe that nothing like a God exists. Do I have proof? Do I claim that I know for sure that God doesn't exist? No, of course not, because that is impossible. But until I have evidence to the contrary I will continue to believe that God does not exist. By the same token, I can't prove that we aren't in the matrix. It is possible that we live inside a simulation and we will never know it, we can't prove that it is not the case. This is an interesting conversation to have, which I actually think is a quite fun exercise, but if you were to ask me if I believe we are living in a giant holodeck, my answer would be an unequivocal no.

I think this really started to bug me a few weeks ago, when I saw another atheist going completely out of his way to avoid saying he believes God does not exist. Q: "Do you believe God exists?" A: "I reject any God hypothesis that I have ever seen" Me: "for fucks sake, just say no!" I don't really understand what the fear is here, the next thing they will probably fire back with is "a ha! can you prove it" in which case you can just say "no, because it is proving a negative. I can't prove he doesn't exist any more than you can prove Allah, Zeus, Xenu, or santa doesn't exist" Then you can follow up with "but my reasons for not believing in God are as follows..." It leads to an interesting conversation and your reasons for being an atheist will come up quickly enough, why not just let it go there?

Another aspect of this that sometimes gets on my nerves, is the question of which God we are talking about. Sometimes, atheists will refuse to say outright that they don't believe in God because it is an ambiguous term that can mean many things. While this is true, I don't think anyone arguing for the existence of God is talking about a deistic God, everyone seems to be arguing for a God that is very powerful, who cares about us in some way or another, and interferes in the natural world. I feel comfortable stating in no uncertain terms that I think all such Gods are made up. If those Gods were real there would be some evidence of them that would hold up to the light of day. Suppose I proclaimed that Santa does not exist, then someone came back that he saw santa yesterday in front of macys collecting money for the salvation army. Would I be embarrassed that I made too strong of a claim and I should have qualified that what I meant was the santa that flies around the world giving presents to kids? Of course not, when I say santa doesn't exist, it is understood that I am talking about the magic fat man. In the same way, when I say God doesn't exist, I'm talking about the genie God who looks after us and answers prayers, not the neutered one who set the universe in motion and then spent the next few billion years picking his nose.

Atheism Plus

I imagine most of my readers are already familiar with the bigger atheist bloggers, but in case anyone here doesn't read Blag Hag, or Greta Christina's Blog, or...well I think most everyone on FTB has made a post about this. But just in case anyone has missed it, I thought I would point out that Jen McCreight has recently made a few posts about this new branding on her blogging, Atheism+. Basically it is atheism plus a bunch of social justice topics, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, etc.

The whole thing makes a hell of a lot of sense to me. Equality always makes a lot of sense to me, whether the oppressed minority group is atheists, women, african americans, trans-folk, if their rights are getting taken away we should fight for it. I don't blog about these topics very much at all, being a straight, white guy, I am in the privileged position on most of these topics and I don't often have much to add to the conversation. I do thoroughly support these causes though, and I really like this A+ branding effort (the astute reader will notice the new A+ badge in my sidebar). If you haven't heard about this yet, I recommend reading about it in more detail from Greta, her writing is always great.