Common theist argument: "You know, I used to be an atheist myself..."

[Keith&Co.]

Hands up all the True Atheists here ??? Come on. Out you come.

Not sure what you mean by capitalizing True Atheist in this context. But I am sure that what YOU mean by 'atheist' is generally not what I mean by atheist.
Still, I self identify as an atheist at the moment, if that helps.

Now, how many of you are former Christians who are simply having a Doubting Thomas moment?

Not how I would describe myself. Certainly not with a dismissive 'simply.'
I was RAISED Christain. I was taught to believe. I had questions. I have yet to get answers...

Once an atheist, always an atheist?
I think not.

I would agree, that statement is not true.

I can only hope that if I do someday turn to a belief in a divine being, I do so based on positive evidence, not fear or depression or dementia. At the very least, hope I get answers to the questions that drove me away from The Church in the first place.

Sadly, whenever I ask for evidence, I get logical fallacies, emotional appeals, piss-poor math, piss-poor history, piss-poor language skills, and often quite a huge load of shitty projection.

 

[funinspace]

Hands up all the True Atheists here ??? Come on. Out you come.
Now, how many of you are former Christians who are simply having a Doubting Thomas moment?

Probably not a Doubting Thomas moment, as I deconverted almost 20 years ago now. I grew up mainstream protestant, switched to evangelical/independent Bible churches in college, and lived that way for almost a dozen years. I then went thru about a 2 year crisis of faith that landed me into what I call a functional atheist; theoretical agnostic.

Once an atheist, always an atheist?
I think not.

Of course people can change their views...even you and I.

 

[Politesse]

Once an atheist, always an atheist?
I think not.

Of course people can change their views...even you and I.

It's just that when some people change their minds, their narrow-minded friends swiftly conclude that they are demon-seduced (if crazy Christian types) or deluded by incipient dementia (if crazy atheist types). Not only do they abandon their former friend, they start threads on the internet explaining away their very existence as some sort of fluke. That poor, poor person. Posssessed or deluded or bought off. We miss the person they used to be when we thought they agreed with us!

 

[Keith&Co.]

Once an atheist, always an atheist?
I think not.

Of course people can change their views...even you and I.

It's just that when some people change their minds, their narrow-minded friends swiftly conclude that they are demon-seduced (if crazy Christian types) or deluded by incipient dementia (if crazy atheist types). Not only do they abandon their former friend, they start threads on the internet explaining away their very existence as some sort of fluke. That poor, poor person. Posssessed or deluded or bought off. We miss the person they used to be when we thought they agreed with us!

Which might be why there are people who have lost their faith but still attend church with the family. The 'liars' as Lion calls them. Because being honest would get them demonized.

 

[James Brown]

It's just that when some people change their minds, their narrow-minded friends swiftly conclude that they are demon-seduced (if crazy Christian types) or deluded by incipient dementia (if crazy atheist types). Not only do they abandon their former friend, they start threads on the internet explaining away their very existence as some sort of fluke. That poor, poor person. Posssessed or deluded or bought off. We miss the person they used to be when we thought they agreed with us!

Which might be why there are people who have lost their faith but still attend church with the family. The 'liars' as Lion calls them. Because being honest would get them demonized.

That definitely mirrors my history. When I accepted that I was an atheist, it was a while before I told my wife, because I knew it would make her upset and break her heart. I love her too much to hurt her like that, but then I realized that lying about my faith would hurt her all the more.

I suppose in some people's books, this makes me a liar. So be it. For a brief time I lied about being a Christian out of a desire to spare my loved ones any anguish. If that makes me a bad person, then I claim the title willingly.

Interestingly, I've also been called a liar for calling myself a former Christian. Apparently that is a physical and logical impossibility. So either I'm still a Christian, or I was never a Christian at all during the first 33 years of my life.

 

[Politesse]

It's just that when some people change their minds, their narrow-minded friends swiftly conclude that they are demon-seduced (if crazy Christian types) or deluded by incipient dementia (if crazy atheist types). Not only do they abandon their former friend, they start threads on the internet explaining away their very existence as some sort of fluke. That poor, poor person. Posssessed or deluded or bought off. We miss the person they used to be when we thought they agreed with us!

Which might be why there are people who have lost their faith but still attend church with the family. The 'liars' as Lion calls them. Because being honest would get them demonized.

Indeed. Faith and social identity are complicated. I myself am different things to different people, to a certain extent. In faith, in sexuality, in life goals.

 

[atrib]

- not really a former atheist
- only doing it for the money
- a liar
- only uses straw arguments
- real atheists who reconvert have dementia
- "smells like" a fake
- is a scumbag

Sooner or later you guys are gonna run out of ammo and you won't have ever addressed
(former atheist) Lee Strobel's actual Case For Christ.

But I did. Why did you ignore it. I quoted Strobel himself saying that his atheism consistested of the state of rebelling against his god; that he didn’t disbelieve, he merely didn’t follow.

Because it is much easier to troll people by ignoring the content of their posts, and by pretending to be stupid, and by painting every picture in black and white when the world is anything but?

 

[ronburgundy]

But rationally, one should doubt that this guy was an NFL coach and all the same reasons for doubting this apply to doubting that Strobel was an atheist.

That's just not a valid comparison at all. It is possible to check the claim that someone was an NFL coach, especially today. Any former NFL coach would be able to name the team(s) for which he coached, the dates, etc., and these claims could be verified (or shown to be bullshit) with little else than a Google search. Being an NFL coach leaves tangible evidence of a very specific coaching history.

That's beside the point. Even prior to checking the official coaching records, it would be rational to think this guy is probably lying about being an NFL coach, for the same reasons it is rational to think Strobel is probably lying.

One does not have to do anything in order to be an atheist, especially anything that leaves tangible atheist evidence. I'm about as atheist as they get but I live in the bible belt where "probability" is that you're a Jesus ass-kisser.

Exactly. The probability is low that any person almost anywhere in the US is an atheist, and much higher that they are a theist.
That is why, in the absence of strong evidence, any American is likely to be a theist. Since a person with motive and track record of lying about religious issues has zero credibility, their claim of having been an atheist is not strong evidence of being an atheist. Thus we are left with the strong probability that is was a theist rather than an atheist.

 

[ronburgundy]

You know, if you scan your peepers up to the top of the page, this thread is not about The Case For Christ. You're the one who regularly bitches about people ignoring the subject at hand.

THIS one is about liars claiming to have been atheists. Strobel came up. Maybe you should, how did you put it, piss off if you want to demand that we talk about something else? If you want to claim we are somehow at fault for not talking about what you want to talk about?

Considering that I wasn't the one who brought up Lee Strobel along with a plethora of ad hominem arguments...

Your claim that others are making "ad hominem" arguments is a derail. They are only ad hominem if they are arguments about whether his "Case for Christ" is valid. But they (and this thread) are not about that. They are about whether he was ever an atheist and what the most probable explanation is for him saying he was one. Everything you are calling ad hominem has direct logical relevance to this question that the thread is actually about.

 

[Keith&Co.]

Everything you are calling ad hominem has direct logical relevance to this question that the thread is actually about.

Well, Lion has a history of being the one who decides what the true topic at hand is in any thread, whether he started it or not.

Stamping his little feets and demanding that we only discuss what he wants to talk about, the way he wants to talk about it, with the import he wants to impute it with... Kinda cute, in a 'go 'way, kid, the adults are talking' sort of way.

 

[ronburgundy]

Several pages back there were several posts that implied Strobel and the like were lying when they said they were atheist, hence "fake atheist".

The OP and the whole point of the thread is to evaluate what we should infer when a committed theist claims that they used to be an atheist, with emphasis on when such claims are made by especially strident theists and apologist looking to sell their books that claim to provide a rational basis for theism.

IOW, it's completely different than the situation you described where a poster here spends years and countless posts arguing for atheism, then reach a point where they become/return to theists, although the one's here don't seem to try and make a case that this was a rational conversion. In these situations, we have evidence of the person's atheism long before they became theists, so it not a matter of trusting a post hoc assertion from a current theist about what they used to be.
It also differs from a case like Strobel in that the person does not have an obvious profit motive to make a false claim of prior atheism.

So the two situations differ massively in the relevant evidence and assumptions that must be made to conclude the person was an atheist. With Strobel, we have no arguments by him when he was an atheist, so unlike with long time posters on this board, we have no evidence that his actual state of mind in the past would qualify as being an atheist. All we have is his assertion that he was an atheist. To go from this to the conclusion that he was an atheist requires accepted several very shakey assumptions:
1) His knowledge of atheism is accurate, thus making him capable of classifying someone as an atheist. His own incorrect descriptions of atheists are evidence that this assumption is invalid.
2) He is able to accurately recall his own subjective state of mind about theism from 20 years ago. There is lot's of evidence from cognitive science that people's memories in general are bad, and that most people have poor memory for how they used to think and feel. Thus, this assumption is shakey at best.
3) Assuming both 1 and 2 are valid, he is sincerely attempting to accurately report his prior state of mind regarding his past theistic views. Given the intellectual dishonesty rampant in his public assertions related to religion, there is no basis to accept this assumption. And unlike converted posters here, he has a strong profit motive to lie about this claim.

So, his assertion that he was an atheist only implies he was an actual atheist if all 3 of these assumptions are true, and yet there is no good reason to think any are true, and evidence to suggest that they are likely not true.

This leaves us with no sound evidence he was ever an atheist, combined with an extremely low (less than .01%) a priori probability that a currently devout theist born into a society where 95% are raised around theist assumptions, was ever an atheist during their adulthood or anytime after they were old enough to know what belief in God was.

 

[Tharmas]

Won't say he's lying, but...

In the first part of this video Strobel describes his atheism.

[youtube]Ikxb09pyZwM[/youtube]

He says he decided (as a young man) that God was invented by mankind to allay the universal fear of death, and no real god existed. From there he made the leap, which in my experience most atheists do not make, to the conclusion that “all is permitted,” or that there are no rules of morality, and thereafter chose a hedonistic lifestyle.

He describes his hedonism as bringing no real pleasure. The example he gives of his hedonism is his habitually coming home drunk and raging at his wife and daughter and getting so mad that at one point he kicked a hole in the wall.

His turning point, or moment of clarity, came when he observed his three year old daughter had become afraid of him and would leave the room when he entered.

Now this doesn’t sound so much like hedonism as it does pretty severe alcoholism. As a recovered alcoholic who was not a hedonist, I can nevertheless relate to his experiences. And let me tell you, that behavior doesn’t feel like hedonism or pleasure, at least it didn’t to me! Also the depressing feeling of getting no real pleasure (from drinking) is typical of the alcoholic.

All that said, more power to him for quitting. I will also assert that many heavy drinkers and alcoholics find the strength to quit through religious conversion. (Many do not, however.) But thinking of alcoholism as a hedonistic choice one makes is a big mistake, in my opinion.

 

[lpetrich]

Lee Strobel's alcoholism thus gives him emotional reason #10, "personal failure or crisis related to substance abuse, gambling, guilty conscience, imprisonment, etc.", much like CEM Joad with his fare-beating.

 

[lpetrich]

The Testament Of Joad : C. E. M. Joad : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive (1929) On page 54 he wrote:

When I am in my vagrant mood, society, as I have said, appears to me as something to be preyed upon— I think of it as a great cow, whose udders are for the privy squeezing of the supple fingers of the vagrant. It is even thus, I conceive, that gipsies regard civilization. For example, as a vagrant I cheat the railway company whenever I can, returning on the next day with a cheap day return ticket or alleging, when I arrive ticketless at my destination, that I entered the train at a station nearer to it than was in fact the case.

The Great Train Ticket Scandal of 1948 — Crooked Timber

His career as a public ethicist ended abruptly, when he was caught in the first class railway carriage with a third class ticket.

Joad pleaded guilty at Tower Bridge Magistrates Court to fare evasion on the railways, and was fined two pounds plus costs of 25 guineas. It emerged that … Joad had an obsession about trying to defraud the railways, and he used to carry pocketfuls of penny tickets, lie about which station he had boarded the train, and even scramble over hedges and fields to avoid ticket collectors. He was replaced on the next edition of the programme and never appeared on it again. Possibly as a result of this, in his last years he changed from atheism to religion, as detailed in his final book, “Recovery of Belief” (1952).

I couldn't find a source for that quote, however.

Campaign to keep the name Joad alive - West Sussex Gazette

In April 1948, Joad was convicted of travelling on a Waterloo-Exeter train without a valid ticket

“His fall from grace was extremely rapid - sacked by the BBC, the title “Sir Cyril” lost, and then diagnosed with cancer. But CEMJ’s best work as a writer was produced late in life, here in West Sussex.

C. E. M. Joad - Spartacus Educational

On the outbreak of the Second World War he offered his services to the Ministry of Information. This idea was rejected but in January 1941, Joad became a member of the panel of the BBC radio programme The Brains Trust. The programme was a great success and Joad became a well-known public figure. His favourite expression, "It depends what you mean by..." became a popular catch-phrase. However, the Conservative Party complained about his "socialistic" answers.

...
On 12th April 1948, Joad was convicted of "unlawfully travelling on the railway without having previously paid his fare and with intent to avoid payment." He was fined £2 but as a result of the conviction he was sacked from The Brains Trust team. He was also told that he had lost all chance of gaining a peerage.

Joad was now in poor health and was confined to bed. In 1952 he published The Recovery of Belief. In the book he endorsed Christianity and the Anglican Church. He died of cancer at his home, 4 East Heath Road, Hampstead, London, on 9th April 1953. As Jason Tomes has pointed out: "Cyril Joad was an outstanding educator, a tireless proponent of progressive causes, and one of the best-known broadcasters of the 1940s. His religious conversion alienated radical agnostics who might otherwise have kept his reputation alive."

Seems like he was a compulsive fare-beater, like being a pathological liar or a kleptomaniac.

 

[Learner]

The OP and the whole point of the thread is to evaluate what we should infer when a committed theist claims that they used to be an atheist, with emphasis on when such claims are made by especially strident theists and apologist looking to sell their books that claim to provide a rational basis for theism.

If I could "earn a living" by writing about what I truly believe, and think it could encourage other believers , I wouldn't see any problem in it. But I understand what you're getting at, which is a fair point to ask and scrutinize the motives of individuals.

IOW, it's completely different than the situation you described where a poster here spends years and countless posts arguing for atheism, then reach a point where they become/return to theists, although the one's here don't seem to try and make a case that this was a rational conversion. In these situations, we have evidence of the person's atheism long before they became theists, so it not a matter of trusting a post hoc assertion from a current theist about what they used to be.
It also differs from a case like Strobel in that the person does not have an obvious profit motive to make a false claim of prior atheism.

So the two situations differ massively in the relevant evidence and assumptions that must be made to conclude the person was an atheist. With Strobel, we have no arguments by him when he was an atheist, so unlike with long time posters on this board, we have no evidence that his actual state of mind in the past would qualify as being an atheist. All we have is his assertion that he was an atheist. To go from this to the conclusion that he was an atheist requires accepted several very shakey assumptions:
1) His knowledge of atheism is accurate, thus making him capable of classifying someone as an atheist. His own incorrect descriptions of atheists are evidence that this assumption is invalid.

I still don't know in-depth about Strobel but curiously : " how much detail do you know of the long time atheists on the forum?" Does it compare thorougly to the details you know of Strobel? Arguing against religion (with no faces to the names) on the forum, is not quite the same as reading about Strobel who is a theist (now) writing from a theist POV to other theists.

I don't think its hard for a person to research infomation i.e. "correct discriptions" of atheists" , IF in mind to intentionally be disingenious and write books for profit, ... making sure to get it convincingly right without any suspicious speculations from fans to buy his books, knowing that he would be under such scrutiny as he has been (assuming for arguments sake, Strobel is intelligent enough to be cautious, while being dishonest).

And IF he just did so without the research to atheism, he did so carelessly with much error to his planning.

2) He is able to accurately recall his own subjective state of mind about theism from 20 years ago. There is lot's of evidence from cognitive science that people's memories in general are bad, and that most people have poor memory for how they used to think and feel. Thus, this assumption is shakey at best.
3) Assuming both 1 and 2 are valid, he is sincerely attempting to accurately report his prior state of mind regarding his past theistic views. Given the intellectual dishonesty rampant in his public assertions related to religion, there is no basis to accept this assumption. And unlike converted posters here, he has a strong profit motive to lie about this claim.

I remember a lot of things 20 years ago and a lot of things I don't , it may be, that he remembers those particular things he writes about , but of course we don't know for sure. From wiki , I get he is a writer and journalist. His main job.

So, his assertion that he was an atheist only implies he was an actual atheist if all 3 of these assumptions are true, and yet there is no good reason to think any are true, and evidence to suggest that they are likely not true.

This leaves us with no sound evidence he was ever an atheist, combined with an extremely low (less than .01%) a priori probability that a currently devout theist born into a society where 95% are raised around theist assumptions, was ever an atheist during their adulthood or anytime after they were old enough to know what belief in God was.

I'll have to watch some of his video's (and try and get a copy of his book) as for the moment I'll assume he was an atheist , as atheist as those on this forum.

 

[Jobar]

... I still hold that he could even be an atheist (or a Christian) who has found that repeating in books and speeches to theists what they believe and want to hear is a dandy way to make a lot of money.

WAIT! You mean...
An atheist pretending to be a Christian just to make money

Absolutely... Scum bags come in all flavors. I don't think anyone has ever claimed that all atheists are moral paragons though I have heard such claims about Christians from some Christians - but the number of Christian scum bags that have been exposed certainly demonstrates that not all Christians are moral paragons either.

Sad but true. Neither professing belief nor unbelief means you aren't lying.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Absolutely... Scum bags come in all flavors. I don't think anyone has ever claimed that all atheists are moral paragons though I have heard such claims about Christians from some Christians - but the number of Christian scum bags that have been exposed certainly demonstrates that not all Christians are moral paragons either.

Sad but true. Neither professing belief nor unbelief means you aren't lying.

Or perhaps better yet having the knowledge that there are no moral paragons might just help people grow up. Princess Alice is a powerful meme.

 

[Keith&Co.]

So, there's a post over on FSTDT: http://fstdt.com/QuoteComment.aspx?QID=142267

When I was an atheist, I spent an inordinate amount of time & energy trying to disprove the Bible, God, Christianity, etc., and trying to discourage others from doing the same.

I think he means 'encourage' there. But, okay, a militant atheist who only atheises against Christainity. Not impossible.

It never occurred to me that, if it wasn't true, if it was just a stupid belief, then why was I SO obsessed with it, when there were so many other better uses of my time.

Kind of a common theist dismissal and marginalizing the whole point of atheism, but that's okay, too, if he is NOW a Christain.

Obviously, the answer (which I eventually discovered) is that it's true...

Same thing. I suppose this makes sense from the thumper point of view, which he apparently holds now.

He's really our Creator. We didn't magically spring to life from some primordial ooze.

See, that's where my alarm sounds. I don't believe we 'sprang magically' from the ooze, or anything else.
No one I know of teaches 'magically springing.' This is a creationist lampooning of some scientific speculation, which is OKAY for him to hold, now. Really. It just doesn't make sense that when he was a militant atheist, he thought the science said 'magically sprung' from ooze. So it doesn't make sense for him to argue against it as part of his retelling of his own pilgrim's progress.

Just look at the incredible complexity required for the simplest cell,

And I would hope that back when he was a militant atheist, he had some response to arguments from complexity? What happened to those?
Or was he just one single observation away from losing his atheism?
He never did explain how he came to know that the Bible is true. Was complexity the argument that proved the Bible to be True? If so, why didn't he ask how a complex Almighty Being came into being to be able to create complex cells....?

or the fact that information could not have just appeared as complex DNA, the incredibly complex cell processes... all of it!

And again, a creationist argument presented as a compelling conclusion without the footwork that got us there. Not what I would expect from a 'former' militant atheist.

Do a sincerely honest and open-minded investigation of the scriptures (without falling for the critics accusations carte-blanche).

So, he apparently feels that anyone who finds fault with scripture is just accepting what the critics say, without honestly reading the scripture. Is he saying that that's what he used to do? But then, if the only source of criticism of The True Bible Scriptures is from copying other people's criticism, where do original critics come from?

Join the many of us former atheists who were surprised at the results of a sincere look at the existence of God, the truth of the Bible, and the love of the One Who came to rescue us!

All in all, this isn't very convincing as an atheist's conversion-to-believer story. But it does dovetail nicely as a life-long theist making up a former life as an atheist, with the eventual return to god's bosom.

 

[Worldtraveller]

So, there's a post over on FSTDT: http://fstdt.com/QuoteComment.aspx?QID=142267

I think he means 'encourage' there. But, okay, a militant atheist who only atheises against Christainity. Not impossible.
Kind of a common theist dismissal and marginalizing the whole point of atheism, but that's okay, too, if he is NOW a Christain.

Obviously, the answer (which I eventually discovered) is that it's true...

Same thing. I suppose this makes sense from the thumper point of view, which he apparently holds now.

He's really our Creator. We didn't magically spring to life from some primordial ooze.

See, that's where my alarm sounds. I don't believe we 'sprang magically' from the ooze, or anything else.
No one I know of teaches 'magically springing.' This is a creationist lampooning of some scientific speculation, which is OKAY for him to hold, now. Really. It just doesn't make sense that when he was a militant atheist, he thought the science said 'magically sprung' from ooze. So it doesn't make sense for him to argue against it as part of his retelling of his own pilgrim's progress.

Just look at the incredible complexity required for the simplest cell,

And I would hope that back when he was a militant atheist, he had some response to arguments from complexity? What happened to those?
Or was he just one single observation away from losing his atheism?
He never did explain how he came to know that the Bible is true. Was complexity the argument that proved the Bible to be True? If so, why didn't he ask how a complex Almighty Being came into being to be able to create complex cells....?

or the fact that information could not have just appeared as complex DNA, the incredibly complex cell processes... all of it!

And again, a creationist argument presented as a compelling conclusion without the footwork that got us there. Not what I would expect from a 'former' militant atheist.

Do a sincerely honest and open-minded investigation of the scriptures (without falling for the critics accusations carte-blanche).

So, he apparently feels that anyone who finds fault with scripture is just accepting what the critics say, without honestly reading the scripture. Is he saying that that's what he used to do? But then, if the only source of criticism of The True Bible Scriptures is from copying other people's criticism, where do original critics come from?

Join the many of us former atheists who were surprised at the results of a sincere look at the existence of God, the truth of the Bible, and the love of the One Who came to rescue us!

All in all, this isn't very convincing as an atheist's conversion-to-believer story. But it does dovetail nicely as a life-long theist making up a former life as an atheist, with the eventual return to god's bosom.

Good find. The 'red flag' varies somewhat, but it is usually pretty obvious to an outside observer. That's the thing about so many of these 'conversion' stories, they are stories. They don't have to be true, they just have to convince the theists that they are right.

I can only think of a handful of cases where I know some atheists that converted (or actually re-converted, all the ones I can think of used to be theists). The ironic thing here is that a lot of us atheists were actually supportive on several occasions, because the main reason for conversion was either an overwhelming fear of death, or complete isolation from their community.

The tell is usually something like the complexity argument above, or the probably even more common "I realized I didn't have any morals and could do anything". They are always based on some strawman position that no atheist actually holds.

 

[Keith&Co.]

They are always based on some strawman position that no atheist actually holds.

Yeah, I have seen discussions of atheists discussing problems with atheism. Not all atheists find those as problems, but will generally accept it's a fact.

But I've never seen an atheist say, "Yeah, I'm pretty comfortable with my atheism, but golly, the complexity of the evolved cell (or human eye, or human brain) just nags at me..."