Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Michelle on November 10, 2010 at 9:24am

Hi Myke. I think that most people are able to 'convince' themselves of just about anything. Not believing, to me, is sort of a luxury. She may have had some trouble in her life and thoughts of a god or someone out there to 'help' her or someone for her to cry out to may have comforted her. Because she was able to somehow circumvent her logic, reasoning, and intellect does not make it so that we should somehow then 'know' there is a god. It's silly. I'd just say, like I do to everyone else, hey, whatever you need to get by, go for it. Just leave me alone with the same courtesy. :)

Permalink Reply by Joseph P on November 10, 2010 at 9:47am

Yeah, I guess there really are people out there who get mad at God, because their parent died or something, and they declare themselves to be ... what did this one say, die-hard atheist? Heh heh heh. Wow.

That part right there says emotion to me. Evangelical atheist, sure ... hard atheist, yeah ... devout or die-hard atheist ... wait, what? I'd ask her, first off, why she became an atheist in the first place. If it was for a really bad reason, then it's hardly surprising that a bad argument brought her back to Christianity. Then, ask her why she converted back. I'd love to know what sort of weak arguments worked, like with Kirk Cameron. He's such a pathetic apologist, I'm sure it couldn't have been any kind of good argument that won him back over.

I don't suppose you're still in contact with her that you can do some poking around, huh? Or heck, get me her number or e-mail address, and I'll do the digging. :-D Not seriously, but I do wish that I had someone who had done the conversion from Christianity and back again, so I could pick through their mind, on the subject. I'd like to have some more experiential evidence about the phenomenon.

The simple, initial response to someone who pulls that kind of crap ... saying that since she was an atheist, you can accept that she knows something better than the people who haven't been atheist, and you should accept her word for it and convert? "Well, clearly, you were never an atheist like I'm an atheist. I came to it by reason and logic, not emotional arguments."

Oh, and side note, there's an entire proselytization approach made popular by people like Lee Strobel, where they claim to be a former atheist, before being Born Again. It's a flat-out lie. This is apparently supposed to add weight to their arguments, because they know something that powerful that it can convert an atheist. This girl could be doing that sort of thing.

Permalink Reply by Myke Sorrel on November 10, 2010 at 11:58am

Thanks guys for the response (especially yours very insightful), but in direct correlation of what you said, i actually have a cousin, who use to be a strong atheist i guess you can say in Dawkins scale. Now, the difference between him is, he said he found God through spirituality, and that's fine(he believe in no religion, so i'm assuming he is deist). But we actually got into it on FB, which is a bad thing because everyone can see your argument. He lashed out at me because i asked him "do he think or believe cells have souls, pigs, plants etc", because he basically in a nutshell quoted something that said : "don't worry about death, because the soul have always existed, so just know that the soul came from somewhere it have to return there" something of that sort, that's not verbatim. And he lashed out to me in such ridicule, at the fact when i was a Christian i got a "God is love" tattoo stating how dumb i feel for getting that, which is true, lol, but looking at it remind me where i came from so in a since i'm glad i got it. But, the part that had me like "huh?" was when he stated "You have to remember, i was more of a atheist than you are, so you can't even sit here and try to jump on me" i thought in my head, how can one be *more* agnostic atheist then someone else, i don't know if he meant in terms of a scale, but i just thought that was funny.

To answer you question no i don't converse with her anymore, she deleted me from her BBM :p, but i would love for you to talk to this other women lol, who said that she do believe in aliens ,but if they do exist that the Devil put them here, and fossils to trick mankind (she was so lucky cause i was drunk and passed out, only to respond the next day). She's on my BBM lol, and she's studying theology, although we go through our religious disputes, she is a cool person nonetheless, but i think it's funny that every time i want to talk on the phone with her about it, she always have something to do, hehe. Her favorite argument is "Why is it that all these atheist are converting to Christianity" oh and my favorite statement she said, your not going to believe this, she said atheists are not a minority, Christians are LMFAO!

P.S, me and my cousin squashed the "beef" that day, i told him i wasn't trying to get at him, just understand his view point, he apologized, which is cool, but it's ashame how stuff like this can divide people.

Permalink Reply by Joseph P on November 10, 2010 at 4:43pm

Heh, holy crap. Yeah, that one girl is beyond reaching, I think, without a serious crash course in logic and reason ... a good application of Occam's razor perhaps, too. The line about aliens being put here by the devil is a new one to me. I'd heard the one about Satan putting the fossils there. Anyone who will blame the entirety of a field of scientific knowledge on the devil has more issues than I can sort through.

She needs to go do some research into the statistics, before she makes statements like those at the end, too. The percentage of atheists in this country has grown hugely, in the past ten years. The bulk on the conversion is happening in the opposite direction from the one she says. And ... Christians are a minority? Wow ... just wow. They're not just a majority; they're an overwhelming majority. 80+% is not a minority.

As for your cousin? I dunno, I'd ask him for the evidence and reasoning that turned him into a deist. If he hasn't got that, ask him what personal experience convinced him and how you can discover it for yourself. Odds are, he's got nothing besides fuzzy, metaphysical nonsense, like every spiritualist I've heard.

You could just be focusing on it a bit, yourself, but he seems to be stressing the whole death thing. Maybe he wasn't as strong of an atheist as you thought, or maybe he just had a major moment of weakness and felt the need to grab onto some sort of faith in an afterlife. Heck, some people seem to be such strong atheists because they're approaching it from an emotional perspective, rather than logical. That will put a lot more force behind someone's worldview.

Permalink Reply by Tonya Wynn on November 18, 2010 at 4:37pm

I have never met a person who was an 'out' atheist and then turned Christian or religious. Few people come 'ou of the closet'.

Permalink Reply by Dionysus on November 29, 2010 at 11:09pm

They may very well have been an atheist for the wrong reason, i.e. they were "angry at god" or they didn't get what they wanted even though they prayed real hard, or they had a family member die even though this family member was a really nice person and they didn't think that was fair and so on... What's clearly true though in this instance is that they didn't become a god believer or what's even more of a stretch; a Christian or other type of deist that espouses a specific doctrine because they found solid evidence to believe in. If they did, they'd be the first and they'd be all over the news, internet, newspapers etc. with this new and irrefutable evidence.

What's really going on here is that they were atheist for bad reasons and now they're Chrisitans, Muslims, etc for emotional and "feel good" reasons, for a sense of "community" and support but not in any way shape or form because of some rational, well reasoned and undeniable evidence for a god and not just a mystical, magical, unknowable being but the specific god of the Abramamic religions who has a personal relationship with all humans or at least his "flock" who has opened their heart to him.

Permalink Reply by Craigart14 on February 27, 2011 at 4:11pm

I doubt they were really atheists.  Some evangelical groups actually provide a sort of template for members to frame their testimony when trying to convert others, but it's really aimed at people who might be lapsed or on the fence.  They know nothing about thoughtful atheism.  Usually, they mean something like "I didn't go to church much or think about religion much.  Then I (insert miraculous experience here) and found Jesus."

Permalink Reply by Navitta Nelson on February 28, 2011 at 4:06pm

They were an uneducated atheist, when it came to historical facts, I think.  There is no way to dispute historical facts.  Once you study the origin of the Jesus Christ character and where it came from, you can no longer proclaim his existence. 

 

Some people are atheists but have not thoroughly studied the origin of Christianity or whatever religion they proclaim.

 

I had a friend tell me she wasn't a Christian and was with me that Jesus didn't exist.  Then she went to jail, prayed to God that he let her out in Jesus' name.  Well, she was released the next day.  So then she is a Christian again. 

 

She was only non-Christian because she went off of what she heard me say.  She never studied a thing for herself, which made it easy for her to go back.

Permalink Reply by Thinky Bitch on May 3, 2011 at 10:13pm

I don't have a degree in psychology, but it seems to me that people who "find God" later in life after  whatever else they've been doing usually do so because of some severe psychological stressor: divorce, death of a child, death of a spouse, a severe accident, being diagnosed with a terminal illness, etc. Our brains want things to "make sense" and sometimes the randomness of "shit happens" is just too much for people to bear, I guess. As someone else mentioned already, we seem to be able to convince ourselves of whatever delusion we choose to make us feel better.

With that said, I think if religion really had such a good deal they were offering, they wouldn't need to convert under duress.