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.

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.

Show Your Work

Recent discussions with theists have reminded me of a frequent discussion I had with my students back when I was a math teacher. After handing back exams, I would always give my students a few minutes to look over their exams, compare with each other, and ask questions about how grades were given out (this is an important part of the exam process as it is the best point in time to learn from your mistakes). Quite often, someone will see that they got the right answer to a question and yet didn't receive full credit. Upon inspecting their exam, I will point out to them that they made 2 (or more) mistakes that just happened to cancel each other out. The fact that they got the right answer in the end was just a stroke of luck. This of course has never been the end of the conversation, they always insist that since they have the right answer they should get full credit. I then tell them that I care more about how they get to the answer than what their answer is. What I am trying to see is that they have mastered the material, making several mistakes does not demonstrate mastery, it demonstrates luck on their part (and possibly that I have done a poor job designing the test). This typically ends the conversations, allowing the student to go back to their friends to tell them what an asshole I am.

When it comes to these discussions with theists, I feel largely the same way I felt then. I care at least as much about how you arrived at your point of view as I care about what that point of view actually is. This is especially important when we disagree on something. You say God is real, I want to know why. Don't just say "trust me, he's real", that won't convince anyone, except a child I guess. Try to explain to me why you think he's real, what makes you think that? Of course if your reason is that you have believed it since you were a child, you might not want to point that out.

This is particularly relevant when you make specific claims. "Miracles happen". Okay great, this is something we can talk about, give me an example or point me to a story I can read, something. If I ask you for an example and all you can say is "there are so many, miracles happen every day" or something like that, you've given me nothing. There's potentially some good conversation here, but not if you dodge every question. If you claim there is a "actually a ton of evidence against evolution", then you should be able to give an example of such evidence, and not just some vague statement about how fruit flies don't evolve, but an actual explanation of what you mean, preferably with some kind of link. If you say that there is a bunch of evidence of alien space ships, then you should provide me with that evidence, not just some vague request that I go look it up. Yes, I would love to look it up, point me in the right direction. I certainly don't want to waste a bunch of time finding information on my own, explaining why I think it is nonsense, just so you can say "that's not the right information" or "yeah that is bogus, but there is actual good evidence out there". Fine, show it to me in the first place.

And if we wind up disagreeing in the end that is fine. I have had plenty of conversations with people where I could understand what their arguments were but disagreed with some of the premises, no big deal, we still have a good conversation. We each learned a bit about the other person's way of thinking, and that alone is a good thing, but that can't happen if we don't properly explain our position.

Why we hold our beliefs is at least as important as what those beliefs actually are.

What does it mean to lose an argument?

I was thinking today about logic and argumentation and the fact that when I was a kid everyone around me seemed to be afraid of it. There always seemed to be a bit of unease when going through a logical argument, especially when it related to God. I think there was always the fear of some kind of trickery. They get you to agree to a bunch of things that seem reasonable to you on their own but when put together they conclude something that you disagree with. Here is an example.

I understand trying to avoid such situations, it can be embarrassing. But apart from the fear of being wrong and looking silly, growing up I sensed a different fear, a fear of being tricked out of our faith. Like, if someone has some really slick proof that God doesn't exist and we couldn't refute it then we'd have to stop being Christians. This seems very silly to write down, but I definitely got that sense from my family. It is possible that this was just me reading something that wasn't there, but I don't think so. Also, I have no idea how widespread this mentality is, are my parents an anomaly in this?

So let's talk about what it really means to lose a logical argument. Suppose you agree that A,B and C are all facts that you believe are true, but X is false. I then logically combine A,B and C together to conclude that X is actually true. Something has clearly gone wrong for you here, but what? There are a couple of things, either my logic can be poor, the way I have combined A,B and C together to get X might be faulty. If that is not the case, you are wrong about either A,B,C or X. It doesn't necessarily have to be a complete turnaround. For example, if we decide that premise A was wrong, you don't have to change your opinion to the opposite of A, maybe A just needs a little bit of tweaking. Having these arguments is good, it helps you refine your positions. You shouldn't be afraid of new ideas.

In the example from the video, the woman agrees that
A: God created hell
B: God created the criteria by which souls are judged
C: Everything happens according to God's will
So Matt concludes that
X: God is ultimately responsible for people going to hell.

So what are the woman's options here? As far as I can see, there is not a lot of logic putting these 3 premises together, it follows immediately. So she has 4 options, either God didn't create hell, God didn't decide on the criteria for hell, some things happen outside of God's will, or God is actually responsible for the people in hell. This is difficult, which of the 4 options makes the most sense to her? I'm guessing the easiest way out of it is to slightly let go of C and say that God gave us free will and therefore everything doesn't happen 100% according to God's will. I think as a Christian that is the route I would have gone. Free will and C don't make sense together anyway.

From the other side, I've had a few arguments not go my way as well since I started this blog earlier this year. Obviously it didn't make me a christian, but it did make me rethink what we had been talking about ever so slightly. It made me realize I had made a false assumption somewhere or I had used some poor logic. These things can be very embarrassing and it makes sense to try to keep them from happening as much as possible, but they are ultimately good for us as long as we view them as an opportunity to make ourselves better.